Earlier this week, Federal Judge Kimberly Mueller denied a motion to declare unconstitutional marijuana’s listing as a Schedule 1 drug. Schedule I drugs have no recognized medical value, have a high potential for abuse, and cannot be safely administered even under a doctor’s supervision. To put it bluntly, no sane person believes any of those things. We
As so many of you know, few landlords are willing to rent to marijuana businesses. They are afraid of the very real possibility of losing their property in a federal civil asset forfeiture action. The federal government has been known to seize property being used for cultivating, manufacturing, or selling marijuana. In the last seven
One of my clients sent me a link to this story, asking me to comment on whether it was really newsworthy. My response was not really; the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) decision to allow a listing of Terra Tech Corp. is not a major surprise. It is progress, yes, but it was also somewhat inevitable,
Almost everyone in the cannabis industry loathes Section 280E of the Federal Income Tax Code. For more on why this is the case, check out In the Wake of Marijuana Legalization, It’s Time to Repeal Section 280E. Section 280E prevents cannabis producers, processors and retailers from deducting expenses from their income, except for those considered
If you follow us on Facebook, you probably know about our ongoing saga with the social media giant over its having banned our promoting our page or our posts. Why is Facebook blocking us from promoting content from the Canna Law Blog on its pages? According to the Facebook Advertising Guidelines, and from what we have been
Now that four states have legalized recreational marijuana and another twenty or so states have legal medical marijuana regimes, we are hearing people talk about how taking their legal pot across state borders by car or by air is no big deal. Unfortunately, it is a big deal. A really big deal. It should first
A few weeks back, our nation’s current attorney general, Eric Holder, announced he would be resigning the position he has held since the start of the Obama administration, once his replacement is named and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Holder’s tenure is viewed somewhat as a mixed bag — earning kudos for his efforts to
Why do commercial landlords still hesitate to rent to marijuana businesses? In addition to the remote possibility of a landlord getting arrested and prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for violating the Federal Controlled Substances Act, landlords face the very real threat of losing their property via a civil asset forfeiture. The federal
Be it the IRS, the Bureau of Reclamation, or the banks, the conflict between state and federal laws on marijuana can cause problems to those in the marijuana industry. You should now add filing for bankruptcy to the list. When businesses go (or are near to going) under, they typically file for bankruptcy in a
The Department of Treasury today issued guidance for financial institutions that want to do business with the marijuana industry. The primary force keeping banks away from the marijuana industry has always been regulations issued by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) dealing with money laundering. The Bank Secrecy Act that FinCEN enforces requires banks to investigate their customers and to neither negligently or knowingly do business with bad actors. State-legal marijuana businesses have always fallen into the category of bad actors for the banks, so they avoided potential fines by refusing to provide banking services to marijuana businesses. Today's regulations, however, clarify that banks can provide services to marijuana businesses without running afoul of federal regulations, so long as they abide by the following:
