My exchange with Congressman Dana Rohrabacher on Potential Cannabis Banking Legislation

I recently had a very interesting exchange with Congressman Dana Rohrabacher at the July 7, 2017 meeting of State Treasurer John Chiang’s Cannabis Banking Working Group in San Diego. We seemed to have experienced a joint-epiphany (pun intended ;-) about how to employ the Rohrabacher-Blumenaur Amendment to address concerns by financial institutions and legal cannabis businesses over the lack of protection from prosecution under existing DOJ and FinCEN guidance. I hope to see Congressman Rohrabacher act on our exchange in the near future. Check-out the exchange at (-49:32 to -47:13) and (-41:26 to -40:30) of the video found at http://preview.tinyurl.com/y7x9dbl2

A rough transcript also follows below if you'd prefer to skip the video.

KK: Congressman Rohrabacher, thank you so much for your leadership on this issue.

With respect to the Rohrabacher-Blumenauer Amendment, as it's currently drafted, it would bind the hands of the DOJ in terms of prosecuting any violations of the Controlled Substances Act. Could it be further revised to address prosecutions under the Bank Secrecy Act and AML laws?

DR: I think that's the way it works, my bill does anyway, HR 975, but your question is specifically about ...

KK: About the appropriations amendment, since that seems to have a higher likelihood of passage.

DR: Yeah, OK, no, the answer is no ... because, ... well it might be, you know, let me think about it. All I know is that’s not the way we've structured the amendment now, and I'm not sure if that would gain or lose votes. It seems to me, that if we're getting people ... you know, that's possible--basically we'd be instructing the Department of Treasury and others to make sure money is being accounted for ... in those states where we are not interfering, we also are suggesting that the banking industry recognize that ... now [HR] 975 would cover all that, but we might be able to do that, that's interesting

KK: It just seems that since the appropriations bill has a higher chance of passage, it's got more votes behind it, that maybe adding that feature to it might help …

DR: Let me think about it, but that's a good idea.

....

DR: That [Rohrabacher-Blumenauer] amendment only does what we've done in the past ... we're not taking a step forward, we're just preventing anyone from taking a step backwards. This idea about maybe getting California to set out some type of regulatory [structure] in terms of banking and the financial end of it is a good idea, and then can serve as a basis for what we should try to do. And the gentleman's suggestion here, I'll look into that, in terms of adding this on, and whether you could do it in this specific appropriations bill for the Justice Department. Maybe there's an appropriations bill for the treasury department that we need a Rohrabacher-Farr Amendment for. It may be that's what we need to do.  So that was ... It's very good that I'm here and got that suggestion.