UPDATE: SAFE Banking Act of 2019 passes U.S. House and is on to the Senate.
We wrote about the importance of the The Secure and Fair Enforcement Banking Act of 2019 yesterday. You can read that entry here.
The importance of the SAFE Banking Act to paving the way for providing comfort to financial institutions in turn assuring they will provide services to the cannabis industry as well as giving other third parties safe harbor for the proceeds from transactions with cannabis-related businesses.
After yesterday’s vote, Representative Perlmutter – the chief sponsor, had this to say about the engines of progress:
“If someone wants to oppose the legalization of marijuana, that’s their prerogative, but American voters have spoken and continue to speak and the fact is you can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Prohibition is over,” Perlmutter said on the floor. “Our bill is focused solely on taking cash off the streets and making our communities safe and only congress can take these steps to provide this certainty for businesses, employees and financial institutions across the country.”
The vote isn’t the end of the fight for cannabis reform. Supporters of the bill had even sought to put it on hold to try and facilitate a broader reform bill, but in an end-run around those efforts, the suspension of the rules process was utilized to get the SAFE Banking Act of 2019 passed.
