Mj news for 07/31/2015

[7greeneyes]

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/dea-marijuana-120674.html#.VbvD3flVhBc

Congress’ Summer Fling With Marijuana​

It’s not easy being the DEA these days. After an unprecedented losing streak on Capitol Hill, the once-untouchable Drug Enforcement Administration suffered last week what might be considered the ultimate indignity: A Senate panel, for the first time, voted in favor of legal, recreational marijuana.

Last Thursday, the Appropriations Committee voted 16-14 on an amendment to allow marijuana businesses access to federal banking services, a landmark shift that will help states like Colorado, where pot is legal, fully integrate marijuana into their economies. As significant as the vote was, it’s only the latest vote in a remarkable run of success marijuana advocates have had this year on Capitol Hill.

“The amendment was a necessary response to an absurd regulatory morass,” Montana Sen. Steve Daines, one of the three Republicans to support Thursday’s amendment, tells Politico, referring to the multifaceted and complex system of laws that have been enacted over the past four decades to prosecute a war on marijuana. It’s a war that began on or about May 26, 1971, when President Richard Nixon told his chief of staff Bob Haldeman, “I want a ******* strong statement on marijuana ...I mean one on marijuana that just tears the *** out of them.”

But that war appears to be winding down—potentially quickly. The summer of 2015 could be viewed historically as the tipping point against Nixon’s war on pot, the time when the DEA, a federal drug-fighting agency created by Nixon in 1973, found itself in unfamiliar territory as a target of congressional scrutiny, budget cuts and scorn. In a conference call this week, the new acting DEA administrator repeatedly downplayed marijuana enforcement efforts, saying that while he’s not exactly telling agents not to pursue marijuana cases, it’s generally not something anyone focuses on these days: “Typically it’s heroin, opioids, meth and cocaine in roughly that order and marijuana tends to come in at the back of the pack.”

What a difference a year makes.

Once upon a time—in fact, just last year—then-DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart could dismiss President Barack Obama’s views on marijuana in public and get away with it because she had friends in Congress. After Obama said he believed marijuana was less dangerous than alcohol, Leonhart lambasted her boss as soft on drugs—and criticized the White House staff for playing in a softball league that included advocates from a drug reform group.

Then, she tried to bigfoot Sen. Mitch McConnell over his farm bill hemp provision; she slow-walked Sen. Chuck Grassley for three years over his questions about the DEA’s improper detention of a San Diego college student; and she was downright dismissive of an inspector general report that showed her agents had sex with prostitutes in Colombia who were paid for by the drug cartels the agents were supposed to be fighting. One by one, Leonhart eliminated all her friends in Congress, even as national attitudes about marijuana were shifting under the DEA’s feet.

The day after Leonhart’s appearance before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, when she admitted she didn’t know if the prostitutes used by DEA agents were underage, Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and ranking member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) issued a joint statement expressing no confidence in Leonhart’s leadership. The next day, Leonhart retired, a move Chaffetz and Cummings deemed “appropriate.” That was April.

In May, the Senate made history by voting in favor of the first pro-marijuana measure ever offered in that chamber to allow the Veterans Administration to recommend medical marijuana to veterans. Then when June rolled around, it was time for the House to pass its appropriations bill for Commerce, Justice and Science. That’s when things got interesting. The DEA got its budget cut by $23 million, had its marijuana eradication unit’s budget slashed in half and its bulk data collections program shut down. Ouch.

In short, April was a bad month for the DEA; May was historically bad; but June was arguably the DEA’s worst month since Colorado went legal 18 months ago—a turn of events that was easy to miss with the news crammed with tragic shootings, Confederate flags, Obamacare, gay marriage, a papal encyclical and the Greece-Euro drama. July hasn’t been any different, with the legalization movement only gaining steam in both chambers of Congress.

The string of setbacks, cuts and handcuffs for the DEA potentially signals a new era for the once untouchable law enforcement agency—a sign that the national reconsideration of drug policy might engulf and fundamentally alter DEA’s mission.

“The DEA is no longer sacrosanct,” Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) tells Politico.

The national tide is clearly not in the DEA’s favor. Since Colorado legalized recreational marijuana in January 2014, three additional states have followed suit with full legal weed; the District of Columbia’s fight to legalize continues; the number of medical marijuana states has grown to 23; 14 states have legalized nonpsychoactive CBD oil; and 13 states have legalized industrial hemp, spurring a rapidly expanding legal market for a plant long demonized by the DEA.

At the same time, a national debate about the high costs of sending millions of people—many of them young black and Hispanic men—to prison for nonviolent marijuana offenses has led to increasing questions about whether the zero-tolerance enforcement favored by DEA is the right way to proceed.

That marijuana reform is moving along in Congress at all is a sign of just how far—and fast—the landscape has shifted. Much of the recent uptick of reform voices are actually coming from Republicans, long tough-on-crime legislators who were stalwart opponents of marijuana. In a sign of just how far the sands have shifted, Sen. Lindsay Graham, a Republican candidate for president, tells Politico that he believes, “Medical marijuana holds promise.”

It’s no longer political suicide to be seen on Capitol Hill as backing drug reform. “There clearly is momentum, absolutely,” says Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), a former Air Force JAG officer who replaced Henry Waxman as the congressman from Beverly Hills.

“It’s the first time we’ve ever been able to show momentum in Congress,” Dan Riffle of the Marijuana Policy Project tells Politico.

The looming cuts has the Justice Department issuing dire warnings: “If enacted, the House budget would cause DEA to experience a significant shortfall in their FY16 budget that would severely inhibit their ability to carry out their mission of stopping the manufacture and distribution of illicit drugs,” says Patrick Rodenbush, a spokesman for DOJ.

But unlike such dire warnings in the past, when Congress could be assured of protecting funding for a law enforcement agency seen for decades as key to winning the War on Drugs, the shine has now clearly come off DEA—and that means the agency’s problems might just be beginning.

***

Before last year, marijuana reform had never made it very far in Washington. For decades, it appeared that DEA had no better friend than Congress, a body that blindly believed everything DEA told it about the dangers of weed. In 1998, the first time Congress voted on medical marijuana, it was an anti-medical marijuana House resolution co-sponsored by nine Republicans (including Rob Portman and Dennis Hastert), which passed 311-94.

The first pro-marijuana resolution to get a vote was 2003, a measure that prevents the federal government from interfering with state-legal medical marijuana programs. In 2014, after eight tries, that measure, known as Rohrabacher-Farr, finally passed by a vote of 219-189 as an amendment to a larger appropriations bill. Today, though, nearly all of the momentum now appears to be on the side of legalization. On June 3, 2015, Rohrabacher-Farr was renewed with a vote of 242-186. “That’s a significant uptick,” Riffle says.

 

[7greeneyes]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/01/n...awards-5-medical-marijuana-licenses.html?_r=0

New York State Awards 5 Medical Marijuana Licenses​

ALBANY — Mirroring a national trend toward an acceptance of marijuana, the New York State Department of Health announced the names of five organizations on Friday that will be allowed to sell the drug for medical use in the state.

The organizations will be registered with the state, and each will be allowed to open up to four so-called dispensaries statewide. They are required to be doing business within six months, meaning medical marijuana could be on sale in New York before the end of the year.

The marijuana outlets were authorized by the Compassionate Care Act that was signed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, in July 2014, and the registrations were issued after a three-month review of prospective purveyors of the drug, and amid criticism that the state’s regulations for such businesses are too restrictive.

The companies are Bloomfield Industries Inc., which plans to grow marijuana in Queens and dispense it in Manhattan, Nassau County and two upstate counties; Columbia Care NY, which will grow and operate a dispensary in Monroe County as well as in Manhattan, Suffolk County and Clinton County, on the Canadian border; Empire State Health Solutions, which will grow in Fulton County, northwest of Albany, and have dispensaries in Albany County and Queens, as well as two other locations; Etain, which will grow in Warren County, in the Adirondacks, and dispense in two upstate and two Hudson Valley counties, including Westchester; and PharmaCann, which will grow in Orange County, northwest of New York City, and operate a dispensary in the Bronx, and three upstate counties.

“Today’s announcement represents a major milestone in the implementation of New York State’s Medical Marijuana Program,” New York State Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker said in a statement. “The five organizations selected for registration today showed, through a rigorous and comprehensive evaluation process, they are best suited to produce and provide quality medical marijuana to eligible New Yorkers in need, and to comply with New York’s strict program requirements.”

While New York is one of the largest states to embrace the drug’s use for medical purposes, it is hardly the first: 22 other states as well as the District of Columbia allow some form of medical marijuana, according to the Drug Policy Alliance, a national drug reform group.

California was the first state to legalize medical marijuana, in 1996, and is now approaching its 20th anniversary with hundreds of dispensaries throughout the state. In recent years, four states and the District of Columbia have legalized the recreational use of marijuana, including solidly Republican states like Alaska and more liberal states like Oregon, where the law went into effect this month.

Mr. Cuomo has long had a measured approach to the drug as medicine. During his 2010 campaign for governor, he said he opposed such legalization and, after taking office in 2011, he rebuffed attempts by lawmakers to establish a medical marijuana program. In early 2014, however, the governor announced a plan to allow patients to get the drug through 20 hospitals across the state.

But that plan was almost immediately labeled unworkable by advocates for looser marijuana laws and potential patients, including those suffering from ailments like cancer, AIDS and seizures. Marijuana can help ease the pain associated with some illnesses.

Following the negative response, Mr. Cuomo, in June 2014, announced a deal on the Compassionate Care Act, though it came with some substantial caveats, including barring the smoking of the drug, which most other states with medical marijuana programs permit. Instead, New York provides a variety of other options for use, including inhaling a vaporized form of the drug — similar to the process of consuming nicotine from an e-cigarette.

Despite the rules and a list of precise regulations announced this spring, the bidding for the registrations was intense, with 43 companies submitting applications.

 

[7greeneyes]

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/07/dare-calls-for-marijuana-legalization.html

D.A.R.E. Published an Op-ed Calling for Marijuana Legalization​

The war on drugs is over, and weed won. D.A.R.E., the organization designed to plant a deep-seated fear of drugs in the minds of every late-20th-century middle schooler, published an op-ed calling for marijuana legalization.

Written by former deputy sheriff Carlis McDerment in response to a letter in the Columbus Dispatch, the op-ed explains that it's impossible for law enforcement to control the sale of marijuana to minors. "People like me, and other advocates of marijuana legalization, are not totally blind to the harms that drugs pose to children," McDerment writes. "We just happen to know that legalizing and regulating marijuana will actually make everyone safer."

He continues:

Anyone who suggests we outlaw everything dangerous to children would also have to ban stairs, Tylenol, bleach, forks and outlet sockets and definitely alcohol. Those things harm children every day, but anyone championing that we ban them would be laughed at.

I support legalization precisely because I want to reduce youths’ drug use. Drug dealers don’t care about a customer’s age. The answer isn’t prohibition and incarceration; the answer is regulation and education.

For a program that pioneered the questionable "just say no" policy, this is a breakthrough.

Update: D.A.R.E. appears to have removed the op-ed from its website. Here is the screenshot of the original post:

http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/intelligencer/2015/07/31/31-dare-op-ed.nocrop.w529.h1018.2x.jpg

Daily Intelligencer has reached out to D.A.R.E. for comment, and we'll update once we hear back.

 

[7greeneyes]

http://time.com/3980182/marijuana-tourism-guide/

Your Guide to Marijuana Tourism in America​

Recommendations for the classiest of cannabis connoisseurs

Four states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana for recreational use, but only Colorado and Washington have licensed dispensaries that can legally sell recreational cannabis. Since legalization and sale came to those communities, the budding pot industry in these two states has tried to shape a future of vineyard-esque tours of marijuana farms, and fatty-friendly salons reminiscent of Amsterdam’s cafes. (The phrase “Napa Valley of weed” gets tossed around a fair bit.)

In the meantime, Colorado and Washington still have a ways to go before pot tourism can flourish. Jeremy Bamford, who started the Colorado Pot Guide website in 2013, directs thousands of daily readers to 420 tours and “Bud & Breakfasts,” but official barriers remain. City and state tourism boards still shy away from promoting weed as an attraction, marijuana lounges are still against the law, and hotels tend to give a pretty firm reiteration of their no-smoking policies when you ask about, say, using a marijuana vaporizer in your room, or smoking a joint on your balcony. (Though a few have vague advertisements on Bamford’s site that provide neither their names nor their addresses.)

One of the problems when it comes to official support is the lack of hard numbers. Over the 4/20 holiday, says Bamford, Visit Denver took stock of hotel occupancy rates, and found they were no greater than on an average weekend. Which makes sense, he points out, because Denver’s weed pilgrims are booking cannabis-friendly accommodations instead. The ongoing stigma of marijuana usage among big-name hospitality brands “reflects a bit of a perception problem, because Colorado’s cannabis tourists actually tend to skew older,” says Bamford. This reefer madness mindset is causing hotels to turn away Terry Gross listeners, not Miley Cirus fans.

Still, marijuana-themed tours of Denver and Seattle continue to fill up, and the boom in recreational dispensaries in Colorado and Washington has produced a range of offerings, with highlights and must-sees for newbies and discerning connoisseurs alike.

Denver, Colorado

Despite a lack of promotion from the Colorado Tourism Office, a handful of cannabis-themed tour operators have sprouted up in the Mile High City. For the most part, they don’t offer anything you couldn’t get into on your own, but the aim is to be “your Colorado friend who holds your hand and shows you this is real,” says Matt Brown, who founded My 420 Tours with business partner James Walker. What their company offers is easily the most complete of those guided experiences. In the four-hour Dispensary & Grow tour, which starts at $129, guests are loaded onto a tinted-windowed party bus (that will, throughout the day, intermittently be filled with pot smoke, the shine of green LEDs, and the soothing tones of John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High&#8221 and given a short marijuana user’s guide, outlining the differences between sativa and indica plants; the effects of THC and CBD; and the pros and cons of smoking methods, vaporizers, and edibles.

After being treated to a mixture of those sampling options, guests are whisked off to the Native Roots Apothecary for some discounted weed shopping. Out-of-staters can buy up to a quarter ounce of marijuana at a time, but edibles, says Bamford, “are the more popular option, because of the novelty, and because people on the street don’t have to know that’s a weed cookie you’re eating.” Which helps, because public consumption of pot is still banned in the state. Luckily, Colorado’s new regulations on labeling and potency restrictions makes it easier than ever to stay at or below the state’s (very sensible) recommended dose of 10 milligrams of activated THC per edible serving.

Next up is a tour of Medicine Man, one of the biggest commercial marijuana grow facilities in the U.S. After a somewhat forgettable but by that point pretty satisfying meal at the Icehouse Tavern, the tour ends at Illuzion Glass Gallery, a high-artistry head shop with an extensive selection of smoking paraphernalia and “functional glass art.”

For $1,000, a full weekend excursion with My 420 Tours includes airport transportation and a two-hour cannabis cooking class (pot-infused pumpkin muffins, anyone?) with chef Blaine Alexandr of Conscious Confections, which can also be booked on its own for $129. The $1,000 weekend package also comes with two nights at the Denver Crowne Plaza and a Silver Surfer vaporizer on loan. Edibles aside, vaporizing is the only way you can legally consume marijuana in a hotel room, but even that is best done on the sly, with a pocket vaporizer, as the city’s hotels remain wary of marijuana use, and include it with general smoking bans when it comes to balconies, outdoor lounges, and plazas.

If you’d like to smoke marijuana in your room, your best bet in Colorado (or anywhere else in the U.S.) is to search Airbnb or HomeAway for the words “420 friendly.” Otherwise, in downtown Denver, there’s the Adagio “Bud & Breakfast,” a 122-year-old Victorian house in the Wyman Historic District, which has a well-reviewed “420 Happy Hour” and on-site cannabis-infused massages, done with a “blend of unique oils high in THC, CBD, and CBN, utilizing a full cannabinoid spectrum and allowing for maximum healing potential.”

If Cannabis concierges and “Puff, Pass, Paint” art classes aren’t really your speed, Denver has no shortage of recreational dispensaries and head shops you can visit on your own. For a relaxing, controlled buzz, try the Cherry Slider at LoDo Wellness, or for something more euphoric, order the Ed Rosenthal Super Bud at EuFlora. Both dispensaries are a short walk from the 16th Street Mall, Denver’s pedestrian-friendly shopping district.

Other noteworthy shops from Colorado’s early dispensary boom include Helping Hands, an all-organic dispensary in Boulder; Telluride Bud Company, the only dispensary in Telluride that grows all its weed in town; and Aspen’s STASH, where strains come with print-outs detailing soil nutrients and grow conditions. Maggie’s Farm, which is touted as Colorado’s only true outdoor marijuana grow, runs a handful of dispensaries throughout the state, but its Manitou Springs location is the most popular, due to its location at the foot of Pike’s Peak. It’s not hard to find a dispensary near any one of Colorado’s many national parks, but keep in mind that possession of marijuana on federal land is punishable by up to six months in jail and a $5,000 fine.

Seattle, Washington

Seattle’s leader in kush tourism is Kush Tourism, a tour operator founded by Chase Nobles and Michael Gordon. For $150, they offer a three-and-a-half hour jaunt led by employees dressed in refreshingly non-stonerish khakis and polos. The education-focused tour includes a walkthrough of Sky High Gardens, a 30,000-square-foot growing facility on Harbor Island; a visit to Analytical360, a pot-testing lab; a demonstration at the Boro School of glassblowing, which also offer beginners classes where you make your own pipe; and Uncle Ike’s, a popular local pot shop. “You can get stoned anywhere in this country,” Nobles once told the Seattle Times. “Our tour’s more about education … we take you to see something you can’t otherwise see.” The menu at Uncle Ike’s changes fast, but a few current highlights are the Bettie Page, which offers a potent but clear high that is great for daytime smoking, and Champagne Kush, which has a refreshing, bubbly-reminiscent taste.

If you’re stationed in Lower Queen Anne (Space Needle territory), Cannabis City, the first recreational marijuana store in the city, is another great place to buy weed. Short-term rental sites will be your best bet if 420-friendly accommodations are a must, but the Bacon Mansion, a Capitol Hill bed-and-breakfast, permits marijuana smoking on outside porches and patios, or the use of vaporizers indoors.

Head outside Seattle, and you can check out the Evergreen Market, which offers a pretty awesome vision for what the weed dispensary could be, with modern fixtures, a generous, open floor plan with an industrial vibe, and hardly a pot-leaf insignia in sight. In Olympia, Green Lady Marijuana is an unassuming little pot shop with a great selection of edibles and discreet vaping pens. Spokane also has a fine selection of weed shops, including Satori, which is known for its friendly, knowledgeable staff and impressive selection.

As of July of this year, recreational marijuana use is legal in Oregon, but production and retail licenses won’t be approved until January of 2016. (Alaska is in a similar situation.) Just across the Columbia River from Portland, however, you can spend a few hours touring the grow operation of farmer Tom Lauerman, the “Walt Whitman of weed,” in Bush Prairie, Washington. On the first tour, in June of 2014, Oregon Live reported that he “spoke with equal pride about his tasty sugar snap peas and his Chemdawg, a popular strain of marijuana,” and began the event “with an offer of a complimentary joint.”

 

[7greeneyes]

http://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/249902-marijuana-bank-suing-feds-for-equal-access

(Colorado) Marijuana bank suing feds for 'equal access'​

A Colorado financial institution is suing the federal government to be allowed to serve the state’s growing marijuana industry, according to a report in The New York Times.

The Federal Reserve earlier this month rejected the application from The Fourth Corner Credit Union in Denver, because it intends to provide banking services to state-licensed marijuana businesses.

The federal government still prohibits the use of marijuana, even though many states have taken steps to legalize recreational and medical marijuana.
In response, the Obama administration has loosened enforcement against many marijuana businesses that operate outside of federal law, but it has yet to lift a ban on banks dealing with these companies.

As a result, most banks do not open accounts for marijuana businesses, even if they are operating within states that allow it.

Critics say this is a public safety issue, because it places a target on the backs of marijuana businesses by forcing them to keep large amounts of cash in their stores.

The Fourth Corner Credit Union applied last November to become the first financial institution in Colorado to serve marijuana dealers, but the Federal Reserve rejected their application.

The credit union is now suing the government in federal court for “equal access” to the U.S. financial system, according to the report.

 

[7greeneyes]

http://www.coindesk.com/drone-delivers-bitcoin-purchased-cannabis-in-california/

You May Soon Get Bitcoin-Bought Cannabis Delivered by Drone​

A company near San Francisco has come up with a novel way to deliver bitcoin-purchased marijuana, via drone.

Trees, which claims to sell the "highest quality" medicinal cannabis to people holding a medical recommendation, accepts payments in bitcoin alongside traditional payment methods such as cash, online bank transfer and credit cards.

A spokesperson for the company confirmed that drone deliveries were not currently available, due to local regulations. The drone delivery option, the spokesperson said, would be rolled-out in the future if and when the regulation around the flying devices settled. Currently users will get their packages delivered by "old fashioned in-house drivers".

For now, users are required to provide their Californian driving license and medical cannabis recommendation when ordering online. To get medical approval, consumers must have a short evaluation with a doctor, either online or at a clinic.

Users must give the medical reason for their use of cannabis, declare any pre-existing health conditions, confirm whether they've used cannabis before and state their preferred method of ingestion.

Customers can then choose from six different cannabis boxes, ranging in price from $59 to $149, all of which come with a certificate of authenticity.

Currently, Trees only delivers to customers in the San Francisco Bay area.

Although its proposed delivery method is nothing short of creative, Trees is not the first company to accept bitcoin payments for legal marijuana.

In April last year, the first marijuana vending machine in the US, was unveiled in the sate of Colorado.

State regulation

California was the first state to set a medical marijuana program, enacted by Proposition 215 in 1996 and Senate Bill 420 seven years later.

The Proposition, otherwise known as the Compassionate Use Act, approved by a majority vote, enabled cancer, AIDS and patients suffering from other chronic diseases to grow or obtain marijuana following recommendation by a licensed physician.

Aside from California and Colorado, medicinal cannabis is also legal in 21 other US states.

 

[7greeneyes]

http://nwpr.org/post/northwest-senators-push-open-banking-cannabis-businesses

Northwest Senators Push To Open Banking To Cannabis Businesses​

Legal marijuana is a rapidly-growing reality. Four states, including Oregon and Washington, have legalized recreational use of the drug. Several more – including California – could well do so by the end of next year. Forty states have legalized it in some form for medicinal use.

Now, US Senators from Oregon, Washington and Colorado hope to start breaking down the federal barriers that lock many legal cannabis businesses out of routine banking and financial services.

When you start a business, one of the first things you do is set up bank accounts. But for a lot of budding entrepreneurs in states with legal marijuana markets, that’s often nearly impossible.

Matt Price owns Cannabliss, a medical marijuana dispensary with two locations in Portland and a third in Eugene. Price says local bankers have been willing to open accounts for him. But …

“As soon as corporate gets any wind that you’re in the cannabis industry, they end up just shutting your banking down," Price says.

Price has had his accounts shut down twice, which he describes as “a real nightmare.”

“Sometimes they’ll hold your money for up to a month," Price says. "And just because your bank accounts aren’t able to function anymore doesn’t mean that you don’t still have to pay your employees or keep the lights on or pay your rent or anything of that nature.”

Price is far from alone. According to the Oakland-based ArcView Group – a leading cannabis research and investment firm – the legal pot market in the US was worth $2.7 billion last year. The group projects it will grow to nearly $4.5 billion by 2016. And right now, because banks are leery of dealing with the industry, much of that business is being conducted in cash.

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden says that needs to change.

“By compelling Oregon business owners to operate on a cash-only basis, current federal laws are making marijuana businesses sitting ducks for violent crimes and perpetuating negative stereotypes," Wyden says. "It is ridiculous to make any business owner carry duffle bags of cash just to pay their taxes.”

Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley says lack of access to banking undermines the new industry’s legitimacy.

“Operating by cash is just an invitation to criminal activity and malfeasance," Merkley says. "It’s not a good way of doing business.”

Merkley and Wyden are joined by Washington senator Patty Murray and both of Colorado’s senators in sponsoring a bill that would prevent bank regulators from penalizing banks that do business with the cannabis industry.

Linda Navarro heads the Oregon Bankers’ Association. She says many banks would be happy to offer services to legal marijuana business owners like Matt Price.

“It’s a matter of the regulatory structure that banks have to follow at the federal level," Navarro says. "Marijuana-related businesses are treated much different by the regulators than other types of legal businesses.”

The basic problem, of course, is that while states are legalizing marijuana, the drug is still very illegal under federal law. In 2013, the Justice Department sought to reassure states that as long as they met a list of criteria – such as keeping pot away from kids and preventing it from leaking across state lines – the feds would keep hands off.

Then, the financial crimes arm of the Treasury Department released an elaborate system of rules, requiring banks to frequently monitor and report on their cannabis-related business customers.

But Linda Navarro says these awkward legal workarounds aren’t having the intended effect.

“Frankly they just bring to light the regulatory scrutiny that banks are under when they’re serving these businesses," Navarro says. "It’s much higher, and the compliance burden is much more challenging.”

Exhibit A is the Gresham, Oregon-based MBank. The small community bank put out the welcome mat and quickly became the go-to bank for the cannabis industry in Oregon. But last spring, MBank closed all its cannabis accounts, saying the cost of jumping through all the federal hoops was too high.

Linda Navarro says the Merkley bill is a move in the right direction, but she thinks until marijuana is federally legal, it’ll have limited success in coaxing banks to take on cannabis businesses.

Meanwhile, dispensary owner Matt Price says the government needs to step up to the plate.

“If they want us to be able to run these businesses responsibly, they need to allow us banking so that everything is completely aboveboard," Price says.

The bill itself has yet been scheduled for a hearing, but similar language was adopted as an amendment to the pending financial services appropriations bill.