Congress 'slow to understand' about cannabis

When 38 states in U.S. have legalized marijuana but the federal government has not, the cannabis industry — including LED lighting vendors that supply it — is bound to encounter friction that slows things down.

"Cannabis is not legal federally, and because of that, we have lots of discrepancies between state law and federal law, and this creates a lot of problems, confusion, and fear — and opportunity loss for our industry and for our economy," said Saphira Galoob, CEO of Washington, D.C.-based cannabis lobbying firm The Liaison Group.

Galoob was speaking with David Cohen, CEO of Austin, Texas-based horticultural lighting provider Fluence, in an installment of the company's online video series Fluence Unfiltered. The two were discussing Congress' failure so far to pass legislation that would make banks more likely to provide services to cannabis operations. The legislation is called the SAFE Banking Act of 2021. SAFE "generally prohibits a federal banking regulator from penalizing a depository institution for providing banking services to a legitimate cannabis-related business," the Library of Congress explains.

As mentioned in an earlier episode of the series, the industry's ultimate goal is federal legalization. Although that is not on the near-term horizon, another bill called the MORE Act (Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act) is currently under consideration. MORE would decriminalize marijuana by removing it from the list of scheduled substances under the Controlled Substances Act. It would eliminate criminal penalties for an individual who manufactures, distributes, or possesses marijuana. It has passed the House and is currently in the Senate's Committee on Finance.

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Photo by CRYSTALWEED cannabis on Unsplash

Source: LEDs Magazine