Cannabis and financial services

DoJ working with Treasury to let pot shops have bank accounts, take credit card payments.

The big piece of encouraging news from today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearings is that both the Senators and the Deputy Attorney General were paying attention to the financial-services issue. Banks and credit unions, under pressure from financial regulators, have been very reluctant to allow state-licensed cannabis businesses to set up bank accounts or accept credit cards. As DAG James Cole pointed out, that policy creates a completely unnecessary public-safety risk by making all-cash cannabis businesses attractive robbery targets.

Apparently DoJ is working with FinCEN, the Treasury anti-money-laundering agency, and with banking regulators to get the problem straightened out.

Author: Mark Kleiman

Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out. Books: Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken) When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993) Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989) UCLA Homepage Curriculum Vitae Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com

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