Most US citizens want Congress to legalize banking for licensed marijuana retailers across the entire country.
WASHINGTON — A recent survey conducted by the American Bankers Association (ABA) found that a strong majority of US citizens support freeing federal banking regulations to work with licensed marijuana businesses without facing federal penalities.
Morning Consult, a business intelligence company, conducted the survey on the behalf of the American Bankers Association.
Findings note that the survey found that 9 in 10 Americans with a bank account (89%) say they are very satisfied or satisfied with their primary bank and 88% agree that they have many multiple options when selecting banking products and services like bank accounts, loans, investments, and credit cards.
The vast majority of respondents, about two-thirds, support the passage of the so-called SAFE Banking Act.
This bill would reform federal and state laws by prohibiting federal banking regulators from taking “punitive measures against depository institutions that provide banking services to legitimate cannabis-related businesses and ancillary businesses (e.g. electricians, plumbers, landlords, etc.) that serve them.”
Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo., one of the key proponents of the bill “establishes a safe harbor for any depository institution that chooses to provide banking services to a cannabis-related legitimate [business] which holds and maintains a license from a state or local government to engage in manufacturing, growing, or producing, as well as any business who handles, sells, transports, displays or distributes cannabis or cannabis products.”
The survey interviews with exactly 2,210 adults from February 18 to 19, 2022, with a plus or negative percent margin of error.
“Consumers clearly agree that now is the time to resolve the ongoing conflict between state and federal law so banks can serve legal cannabis and cannabis-related businesses,” said Rob Nichols, the chief executive officer of the association. “Doing so will help banks meet the needs of their communities while enhancing public safety, increasing the efficiency of tax collections and improving the financial transparency of the cannabis industry.”
“Americans understand that no industry can operate safely, transparently, or effectively without access to banks or other financial institutions and it is self-evident that this industry, and those consumers that are served by it, remain severely hampered without this access,” said Paul Armentano, the deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
“It is also clear that the status quo is actively hurting small businesses and creating unnecessary barriers to entry for entrepreneurs from those communities that have been disproportionately impacted by decades of cannabis prohibition,” adds Armentano in a statement in response to the ABA survey.
