Medical Marijuana Dispensary Banking Woes

In the usual fashion of one part progress to two parts regression, I have a story of weed woe to share.

Two weeks ago, my dispensary was informed by their bank that they were no longer able to provide banking services. Specifically, the change made it so that the dispensary was unable to accept debit or credit cards.

I have been a patron of this place for over a year and they have been in business for a few years prior to my arrival. During which time, they have accepted plastic. This has been a tremendous convenience for me and (I imagine) many other people. It is so easy to forget cash, or not have time to hit an ATM or, if you needed to, you could even use credit to get your medicine and pay it off at a better time.

Even the owners of the dispensary aren’t exactly sure what precipitated this change. They have maintained exemplary records and have an outstanding banking history. Someone, somewhere (likely some government jackboot) instilled enough fear in the bank to cause the cessation of services for my dispensary.

This is one instance where I might actually let the banks off the hook. Banks are, after all, just trying to avoid persecution and legal activity, and are waiting on the feds. The culprit is the strict anti-money laundering rules that prohibit banks from handling the proceeds of illegal activities. I can understand this to a point. Especially in states that only have medical marijuana and still subscribe to prohibition on recreational use.

But here in Washington state? We legalized this plant and I still get the sense that the powers that be are hoping and trying to find ways to enforce a type of backseat prohibition until they can be certain that they, and they alone, will reap the profits. This is going to be a quagmire with ever increasing urgency as WA gets closer and closer to selling recreational weed. Washington will have a lot of pissed off MMJ patients if they succeed in implementing their ridiculous MMJ recommendations and act as a road block for the financial services that any other legal industry has access.

For some reason, though, I suspect that once the state stands to profit, they will find a loophole (or just drill a hole) in the current fiscal laws in which they can comfortably sit.

We are sort of in a wait-and-see place with MMJ in Washington. The lawmakers are trying to do some pretty underhanded shit. For now, I almost feel like I’ve time-warped back to prohibition. I have to plan cash into my dispensary visits and cross my fingers that MMJ will not be gutted by the state money bus. A possible work around is to have an ATM in the lobby of the dispensary, but we are all hoping it doesn’t come to that.