Federal Agency Asks Marijuana Businesses To Complete Survey As It Forms 2025 Focus Groups On Industry Banking Issues
From toxifillers.com with love
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is convening focus groups comprised of marijuana businesses to better understand their experiences with access to banking services under federal prohibition.
With bipartisan cannabis banking legislation dead for the session, GAO is circulating a survey as it prepares to bring together virtual focus groups in January or February 2025.
The effort seems responsive to a request from Sens. Raphael Warnock (D-GA), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Tina Smith (D-MN) and John Fetterman (D-PA), who sent a letter to Comptroller General Gene Dodaro last December. They asked GAO to initiate a “study regarding the economic effects of the War on Drugs and the role that financial institutions can play in addressing these effects.”
“Such a study should also investigate the effects that legislation to regulate financial institutions that serve the cannabis industry would have on the country’s racial wealth gap,” the lawmakers said in the letter.
The senators listed six topics that they asked GAO to investigate as part of one or multiple studies:
- To what extent would allowing financial institutions to bank state-sanctioned cannabis significantly ameliorate any negative economic effects or disparities arising from the War on Drugs and, if so, to what degree:
- What federal actions or policies (regulatory, legislative, or otherwise) would reduce regulatory uncertainty and facilitate the role financial institutions can play in addressing the effects of policies related to the War on Drugs, specifically in communities of color who have dealt with the negative effects of these policies
- Economic effects of federal, state, and local policies to prosecute the sale, possession, use, manufacture or cultivation of cannabis, including the collateral consequences of arrests and incarceration
- Whether these economic effects differ across the country, including by race, gender, socioeconomic status, or other classifications as appropriate, and whether those economic effects have contributed to widening inequality, including of the racial wealth gap
- If economic effects exist, to what extent (if at all) communities have recovered from those economic effects, especially those communities with high rates of prosecution and incarceration under the War on Drugs
- Whether state policies to decriminalize or legalize cannabis have significantly ameliorated the negative economic effects or disparities arising from the War on Drugs and, if so, to what degree
Now GAO has posted a brief survey as it seeks to form focus groups, with five basic questions for prospective participants who are directly or indirectly involved in the state-level cannabis industry.
The survey, first reported by CRB Monitor News, asks whether the business is a multi-state operator, what kind of cannabis-related activities they’re involved in, their total number of employees, any additional relevant information they’d like to provide and contact information.
“GAO plans to aggregate information you and other focus group participants provide during the focus groups,” the office said. “For example, we may report: ‘In all 6 focus groups GAO held, owners of licensed cannabis-related businesses reported that financial institutions have required significant fees when approving a business loan.’”
An agency spokesperson told CRB Monitor News that GAO is “interviewing federal agency officials, banking associations, and cannabis industry groups; analyzing federal agency policies, procedures, and guidance to financial institutions; and reviewing relevant academic studies.”
GAO has specifically reached out to the National Cannabis Industry Association, which has circulated the survey to its members, the outlet said.
Warnock, who led the letter, is the only Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee who voted against the Secure and Fair Enforcement Banking Regulation (SAFER) Banking Act in September 2023. He argued that the legislation did not adequately address social equity and criminal justice issues related to federal prohibition.
At the time of the markup, the senator filed an amendment to require a GAO study on the “racial wealth gap and the percentage of minority-owned cannabis-related businesses before and after the passage of the SAFER Banking Act.” It was not made in order, however.
“Financial institutions can play an important role in addressing any economic harms caused by the War on Drugs, including its effects on the racial wealth gap,” Warnock and his colleagues wrote to the comptroller general last year. “We look forward to your timely response on this issue of critical importance.”
Meanwhile, a Senate source told Marijuana Moment earlier this month that Republican House and Senate leadership “openly and solely blocked” Schumer’s attempt to include the bipartisan marijuana banking legislation in a government funding bill as the session came to a close.
The majority leader had said following last month’s election that he remained committed to moving the SAFER Banking Act during the lame duck session, and that he was eyeing the must-pass stopgap funding legislation to get that done.
Warren and Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) had challenged the idea that there was enough GOP support for the SAFER Banking Act to pass on the Senate floor during the lame duck session.
Warren accused certain Republican members of overstating support for the legislation within their caucus, while also taking a hit at President-elect Donald Trump for doing “nothing” on cannabis reform during his time in office as he makes a policy pivot ahead of the election by coming out in support of the marijuana banking bill and federal rescheduling.
Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-CO) also recently argued in an interview with Marijuana Moment that the main barrier to getting the marijuana banking bill across the finish line is a lack of sufficient Republican support in the chamber. And he said if Trump is serious about seeing the reform he recently endorsed enacted, he needs to “bring us some Republican senators.”
—
Marijuana Moment is tracking more than 1,500 cannabis, psychedelics and drug policy bills in state legislatures and Congress this year. Patreon supporters pledging at least $25/month get access to our interactive maps, charts and hearing calendar so they don’t miss any developments.
Learn more about our marijuana bill tracker and become a supporter on Patreon to get access.
—
Retiring Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), co-chair of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, had said in a letter to the House speaker that the cannabis banking bill is one example of a measure that should be brought to the floor imminently following Trump’s statement of support, as well as recent reporting about unearthed audio where former President Richard Nixon could be heard conceding that cannabis is “not particularly dangerous.”
“I would suggest moving policies that, instead of further dividing us, makes a difference for the American people, including for our veterans, law enforcement, small businesses, and more,” the congressman, who is retiring at the end of this Congress, said. “It’s never too late to do the right thing.”
Prior to becoming speaker, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) consistently opposed cannabis reform, including on incremental issues like cannabis banking and making it easier to conduct scientific research on the plant.
Meanwhile, on the one-year anniversary of a Senate committee’s passage of the SAFER Banking Act in September, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released an analysis on the economic impact of the reform, including the likely increase in federally insured deposits from cannabis businesses by billions of dollars once banks receive protections for servicing the industry.
Feds Feature Stoned Christmas Tree In New Ad Warning About Marijuana-Impaired Driving Around The Holidays
The post Federal Agency Asks Marijuana Businesses To Complete Survey As It Forms 2025 Focus Groups On Industry Banking Issues appeared first on Marijuana Moment.