If President Donald Trump moves forward with marijuana rescheduling, the reform would be an “important domino” to advance bipartisan cannabis banking legislation, the GOP Senate sponsor says.
In an interview with Ask a Pol reporter Matt Laslo that was released on Friday, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) was asked about his earlier comments about how his legislation, the Secure and Fair Enforcement Regulation (SAFER) Banking Act, would be taken up this fall, which began last week.
“We’re still seeing what we can do to get it done in Q4,” the senator said. “As you know, the Democrats give us a lot of stuff to do. We have to fund the government, we have to get [the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA] across the finish line. We’ve gotta get [Trump’s judicial nominations] done.”
Pressed on Trump’s prior endorsement of moving cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), Moreno said that modest reform is “obviously” an “important domino” in the process, and “there’s a lot of my colleagues that would have that concern if we didn’t do the rescheduling” before enacting the banking legislation.
“So we’ll look at that—but we have time. We have time,” the Republican senator, who has not yet actually filed the SAFER Banking Act this Congress, said.
Whether Trump ultimately decides to move forward with rescheduling remains to be seen. Despite his endorsement of the policy change on the campaign trail ahead of his election for a second term, he declined to restate that support when asked about it during a briefing late last month—though he did say a decision would come within weeks.
On Sunday, the president posted a video on his Truth Social platform promoting the health benefits of cannabis—suggesting that covering CBD under Medicare would be “the most important senior health initiative of the century.”
Reclassifying cannabis as a Schedule III drug would allow marijuana companies to take federal tax deductions they’ve long been precluded from, but it would not inherently address the lack of access to banking services. The SAFER Banking Act, which has passed the House in some form seven times in recent sessions, would resolve that problem. But its pathway to passage has been in doubt given GOP leadership’s general reluctance to advance even incremental cannabis reform proposals.
Read more at Marijuana Moment
