- Medical marijuana now legal in 30 U.S. jurisdictions
- Comprehensive merchant processing solution dedicated to marijuana industry
- Frees customers and retailers from solely using cash
The Controlled Substances Act (CSA), signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1970, continues to cast a baneful shadow over the liberalization landscape. In the half a century since its passage, public attitudes toward cannabis have changed. A survey conducted by the respected Pew Research Center late last year found that ‘57% of U.S. adults say the use of marijuana should be made legal’ (http://cnw.fm/aTFj9). This is up from 12% in 1969, the year before the CSA became the law of the land. However, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) continue to buck this trend. As an example, in May 2017, Attorney General Jeff Sessions wrote Congress to record his opposition to the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, the spending rider that bars the Justice Department from interfering with the implementation of state medical marijuana laws. Consequently, cannabis is neither fish nor fowl; it’s legal in some states but simultaneously illegal by federal law. Luckily, Medical Cannabis Payment Solutions (OTC: REFG) is offering a way out of this muddle. Through its wholly owned subsidiary, StateSourced, the company provides a proprietary, closed loop system of merchant processing for marijuana enterprises. Now marijuana dispensaries will have access to the only first-tier merchant processing operation currently available.
Despite being legalized in 29 states and the District of Columbia, medical marijuana remains a Schedule 1 substance under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. Accordingly, the members of the U.S. Federal Reserve System feel compelled to abide by the provisions of the CSA and will not charter any financial institution that serves marijuana businesses. In a seminal case late in 2015, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by the Fourth Corner Credit Union of Denver that attempted to compel the Federal Reserve to grant the credit union a ‘master account’ (http://cnw.fm/nHSc2). The judge agreed with the motion put forward by the Fed that ‘even transporting or transmitting funds known to have been derived from the distribution of marijuana is illegal’ and that, unlike federal prosecutors who might not enforce the law if financial institutions observed certain guidelines for dealing with the marijuana industry, a court could not ‘look the other way’.
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