Marijuana Money Is Still a Pot of Trouble for Banks

Last month the director of the
Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network claimed
marijuana businesses are finally gaining access to banking services
thanks to guidance from officials in Washington. As University of
Alabama law professor Julie Andersen Hill notes in a paper she
delivered at a conference last week, that view is more than a
little overoptimistic. In my latest Forbes column, I
explain why Hill and other critics say the cannabis industry’s
banking problems can’t be properly addressed without congressional
legislation. Here is how the piece starts:

During a visit to the Dixie Elixirs &
Edibles plant in Denver last summer, I saw the machines
the company uses to produce cannabis concentrates, the kitchen
where it makes marijuana-infused chocolates, and the bottling line
for its THC-spiked sodas. Toward the end of the tour, I had a
semi-serious question for the company’s CEO, Tripp Keber: “Where do
you keep your piles of money?”

Keber laughed but quickly turned serious. “We actually have
strong banking relationships,” he said. “We don’t talk about them.
Asking someone about their banking is like asking them what they
wear to bed at night. It’s an intensely personal question, even
within the industry.” You can begin to understand why banking is
such a touchy subject for the newly legal cannabusinesses in
Colorado and Washington (as well as growers and dispensaries in the
21 states that allow medical but not recreational use of marijuana)
if you consider the federal laws a financial institution violates
when it does business with a state-licensed company like
Keber’s.

Read the whole thing.