Banks are reluctant to provide traditional financial services to marijuana businesses making it difficult, and in most cases, dangerous for legal marijuana growers, according to a report by The New York Times.
According to the report, legal marijuana merchants are conducting their businesses paying and accepting hard cash because no banks would allow them to open and maintain bank accounts.
The problem arises from the nature of federal and state laws that still consider marijuana an illegal drug. Under The Controlled Substances Act that was enacted in 1970, marijuana is classified as a Schedule I drug categorizing it as the most dangerous substance together with other chemical-based drugs such as ecstasy, heroin, and LSD.
The classification makes banks fearful of punishment in case federal regulators run after prospective accounts of marijuana businessmen and their dispensaries. Banks, in effect, are avoiding possible large fines, and worse, violating prohibitions on money laundering.
"Banking is the most urgent issue facing the legal cannabis industry today," Aaron Smith, executive director of the National Cannabis Industry Association in Washington, D.C., told the Times. Smith said that legal marijuana sales in the United States could reach $3 billion this year
"So much money floating around outside the banking system is not safe, and it is not in anyone's interest. Federal law needs to be harmonized with state laws," Smith added.
For marijuana business owners, the limitations they experience with banks pose more problems in their budding business. Employees are paid with hard cash placed in bags and sometimes in Tupperware containers, the report said.
With no banks willing to open a bank account, the all-cash nature of the business creates security concerns for business owners.
"Carrying such large amounts of cash is a terrible risk that freaks me out a bit because there is the fear in my mind that the next car pulling up beside me could be the crew that hijacks us," Ryan Kunkel, owner of a marijuana dispensary told the Times. "So, we have to play this never-ending shell game of different cars, different routes, different dates and different times."
Almost on a regular basis, Kunkel would stash loads of cash in a rumpled paper bag into the trunk of his BMW, and drives off in town like a character in the Grand Theft Auto video. The only difference is he's not out to run down on anyone, but to go to the Washington State Department of Revenue to pay his taxes.
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