Feds Offer Slim Hope to Banks That Serve Marijuana-Related Businesses

It’s not a lot on which to rely, but a new U.S.
Justice Department memo offers a bit of hope—perhaps vain hope—that
the federal government is backing off the threat of instant doom
for any financial institution that offers services to marijuana
related businesses. In a
missive dated today, Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole
writes that prosecution may not be appropriate “if a financial
institution or individual offers services to a marijuana-related
business whose activities do not implicate any of the eight
priority factors.”

Those eight “priority factors” are:

• Preventing the distribution of marijuana to minors
• Preventing revenue from the sale of marijuana from going to
  criminal enterprises, gangs, and cartels
• Preventing the diversion of marijuana from states where it is
  legal under state law in some form to other states
• Preventing state-authorized marijuana activity from being used
  as a cover or pretext for the trafficking of other illegal drugs or
  other illegal activity
• Preventing violence and the use of firearms in the cultivation
  and distribution of marijuana
• Preventing drugged driving and the exacerbation of other
  adverse public health consequences associated with marijuana
  use
• Preventing the growing of marijuana on public lands and the
  attendant public safety and environmental dangers posed by
  marijuana production on public lands and
• Preventing marijuana possession or use on federal property

Is there any circumstance that doesn’t implicate those
factors in some way, depending on your interpretation?

Jacob Sullum
already predicted that this memo won’t be very reassuring to
banks. This is, after all, the same administration that suggested
it would “de-prioritize”
marijuana prosecutions and then
did nothing of the sort. Trusting their business, and freedom,
to non-binding guidance from an administration has only grudgingly
ceded any ground on the drug war may just be a step too far for
bankers.

But the memo will probably get nice press coverage. So there’s
that.