It won’t make headlines the way, say, Canopy Growth acquiring Acreage did, but this week something big happened in cannabis. A letter calling for federal banking reform on cannabis and representing all 50 state banking associations was sent to the Senate Banking Committee Chair. Yes, the banking organizations in every state within our union is calling for reform.

Cannabis banking reform is about a lot more than just money

Don’t get us wrong, this is about MONEY. Namely, it’s about plant-touching businesses being sick and tired of handling hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash on a monthly basis. As we’ve discussed when discussing the SAFE Act, transactions of an all cash variety are burdensome to the company, the customer and the industry.

However, this cash-only mandate that our industry was burdened with is untenable. Not only are the logistics a nightmare in transporting such huge amounts of cash on a daily, weekly, monthly basis cumbersome. They are downright dangerous to companies, employees and the general public.

Tax collections would be easier with cannabis banking reform

Beyond the inherent and obvious risks of criminality centered on crooks trying to steal these, again, very large accumulations of actual and physical cash, taxes rendered to states that have legalized have been greatly impeded in collections due to the wholly unique quandary of collecting huge sums of cash from businesses. It’s an 18th century problem in the second decade of the 2000s. While the MMLG blogger’s not certain if Scrooge McDuck is handling the double-entry bookkeeping and counting each cent that comes in, the sheer absurdity is indeed cartoonish enough on its own.

Complicating the tax matter in ALL legalized states further is the inconvenient fact that with a cash-only policy in place, audits are cripplingly slow endeavors due to, y’know, cash not really having an easy paper trail to follow or anything.

Lack of cannabis banking reform keeps small businesses + ancillary companies from thriving

Tossing aside the gross risk and tax difficulty, cash-only places an unfair burden onto small business owners, who may lack the capital to handle paying for EVERYTHING in cash, and ancillary companies that don’t handle the plant such as, well, MMLG for one.

The state bankers association letter paints a clear picture of what’s at stake and what can changed by the House and Senate acting in the best interest of so many across the entire United States. It’s easy to think that cannabis is “just a California thing” or “just a Colorado thing,” but the fact of the matter is that this is an American thing. We’re an American industry that’s silently providing nearly 300,000 jobs and we drive billions of dollars in revenue that’s cash-only … for now.