A rational and impassioned plea for federal marijuana banking reform from eight Pennsylvania state Republican lawmakers landed in the inbox of retiring U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey on Dec. 7.
But like almost everything related to the SAFE Banking Act, the bill in Congress most desperately desired by major companies in the $33 billion U.S. marijuana industry, it didn’t work.
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The eight state lawmakers’ message, released publicly in mid-December by the Pennsylvania Cannabis Coalition advocacy group and picked up a week later by the cannabis industry during a last-ditch lobbying effort, made a fiscal and moral appeal:
In their state alone, cannabis is a $6.3 billion business. Yet, an industry that employs 30,000 in Pennsylvania, the lawmakers wrote, “still has limited access to banking,” a situation with “unacceptable real-world consequences including” murdered medical marijuana dispensary employees as well as canceled bank accounts.
Their argument was compelling and
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