Hickenlooper, lawmakers right to back hemp in pot banking bill

by Samantha Walsh
Source: denverpost.com

Jamie Lyn Tanner of Gilcrest is checking the hemp product during 

NoCo Hemp Expo in downtown Windsor in early April. Numerous 

counties have started meetings and expos to explain hemp industry. 

(Hyoung Chang, The Denver Post)

While Gov. John Hickenlooper has experienced some policy hiccups
when it comes to marijuana issues, his office pulled off a historic and
critical win for the cannabis industry with the recent passage of House
Bill 1398.

For several years now, the marijuana industry has had to play a dangerous
game of cloak-and-dagger with the banking industry in order to secure
access to financial services. Now, with the passage of HB 1398, those
businesses that have lost bank accounts or that have had to truck around
large amounts of cash — putting their businesses, employees and lives
at risk just to pay the rent — will be able to form their own financial co-
operatives, a sort of stateless credit union.

It is not that all marijuana businesses are bankless (some do have bank
accounts but are highly secretive about it, for good reason). It is that the
banks are reluctant to take their business. Even with the recent federal
guidelines, the financial services industry is still taking the position that
it cannot bank these businesses.

The guidelines for financial institutions that accept marijuana businesses
are onerous and make compliance for the bankers very difficult, though
not impossible.

However, the biggest hurdle facing marijuana businesses and these banks
is the ever-present fact that cannabis is still illegal on a federal level. While
a bank or its employees have yet to be arrested or even charged with money
laundering crimes associated with legitimate marijuana businesses operating
in Colorado, it is entirely understandable that these institutions are reluctant to
engage in what is considered an illegal activity in the eyes of the federal
government.

For that reason alone, the governor was right to back the inclusion of industrial
hemp businesses and farmers into the financial co-op bill.

Like marijuana, the cultivation of hemp, its non-psychoactive cousin, is still illegal
under federal law. In fact, a significant part of the Drug Enforcement Administration's
annual $3 billion budget is dedicated to the eradication of feral hemp plants, or
"ditch weed." This means that the 100 farmers who have registered with the
Department of Agriculture to cultivate hemp this year are putting themselves and
their farming operations at risk by growing this crop.

Consequently, many are being refused banking services.

One has to wonder why these farmers would literally bet their farm on such an
endeavor. Yet, anyone who has been to the rural parts of our state understands
that the new economic opportunity presented by hemp cultivation is the only hope
that some of these farmers have left.

America currently imports 90 percent of the hemp market for about 25,000
documented uses by our own federal government, for application in building materials,
bio-fuels, hemp bio-plastics, and clothing, among others. Far from a niche market,
hemp products are currently used by auto manufacturers such as Ford Motor Company
and Mercedes-Benz, not to mention the hemp food products that are now dominating
the organic food market. We should be investing in hemp and creating a new economic
opportunities for the whole country.

We in the hemp movement will be forever grateful to the governor's office for standing
up for rural Colorado and all the budding entrepreneurs in our state. This is a historic
win for Colorado and the cannabis industry.

We look forward to Gov. Hickenlooper's signature on HB 1398 and Senate Bill 184.

Samantha Walsh represents the United Food and Commercial Workers Union 
International Hemp and Cannabis Division and is political director for the Rocky 
Mountain Hemp Association.