U.S. House votes this week on banking bill for cannabis companies

The House of Representatives will vote this week on a landmark bill to allow U.S. banks to trade with cannabis businesses, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer announced Friday.

«We will be looking at several bills [...], including the H.R. 1595, the SAFE Banking Act 2019, as notified,» Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, told the House.

The bill is due to be debated on Wednesday. It aims to establish legal safeguards for banks offering their services to legal cannabis businesses despite federal prohibition, and hemp under federal authorization. For the time being, the vast majority of legal cannabis activity is cash-based, posing de facto problems security and monitoring of financial flows.

«The SAFE Banking Act is all about taking money off the street and making our communities safer,» said Representative Ed Perlmutter, a Colorado Democrat and the bill's main sponsor, when it was introduced in March. «Only Congress can provide the confidence financial institutions need to start running legal cannabis businesses, just like any other legal business, and reduce the risks to employees, businesses and communities across the country.»

2/3 of votes required

The bill has garnered the support of 206 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives, including 26 Republicans, while the companion bill in the Republican-majority Senate currently has 33 co-sponsors, mainly Democrats. It will need two-thirds of the vote (290) to be validated in the House of Representatives.

The project is also supported by the 4 largest bank associations, the 51 banking associations in each state, the financial regulators from 25 countries or even Republican and Democratic governors of 20 states and Paypal.

Several associations campaigning for the legalization of cannabis, the ACLU, Human Rights Watch and the Drug Policy Alliance, Nevertheless, they called for the vote to be postponed. They all deplore the fact that the bill only concerns the industry, with no measures for social justice or to correct the damage done to minorities by cannabis prohibition. This is also the case for Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a fervent supporter of cannabis legalization, who announced that she might vote against the bill if the House did not first take measures to ensure social equity in the cannabis sector.

NORML, which is in favor of advancing the banking bill, considers this «an important first step for Congress», while pointing out that broader legislation needs to be developed.

If the bill wins approval in the House of Representatives, its prospects in the Republican-controlled Senate remain uncertain. While some key senators such as Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-ID) have recently indicated their inclination to seek a legislative solution to the problem, lawmakers in the Good Old Party don't generally have the same enthusiasm for cannabis reform as their Democratic colleagues. The President of Congress however, revealed last week that he envisaged being able to pass the cannabis banking and business bill before the end of the year. Several amendments have also been filed to win more support from Republicans, including targeting hemp and CBD businesses

The Safe Act  has been validated earlier this year by the House Finance Committee by 45 votes to 15.