Marijuana Moment write
Republican senators stepping up efforts to stall marijuana banking legislation, with one member writing a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) criticizing his legislative priorities and another making misleading claims about planned amendments to the bill.
While the Secure and Fair Enforcement Regulation (SAFER) Banking Act passed the Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday with bipartisan support, longstanding prohibitionists in the chamber are making their opposition known in different ways.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) sent a letter to Schumer on Thursday to express concern about the Senate’s “ongoing prioritizing of legislation relaxing marijuana laws” over a separate measure the GOP senator favors to permanently prohibit fentanyl analogues. He attached 11 other letters from families of people who’ve died from opioid overdoses that voice support for the fentanyl legislation.
“Instead of addressing this crisis, the Senate appears to be turning its attention to legislation designed to ease the movement of marijuana money through the financial system, and provide access for Wall Street to invest billions of dollars into this industry,” Grassley wrote.
“Further complicating matters,” the senator said, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has advised the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). He complained that “the Senate has not considered the interplay between reclassification and the SAFE Banking Act.”
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