Indopedia All Things Marijuana
Earlier this month, Ohio regulators finished drafting the rules for the state’s medical marijuana program, slowly setting the wheels in motion for implementation next year. Although the state’s freshly baked legislation has yet to take effect, there are already issues placing local marijuana businesses in a financial quandary.
Cannabis companies in the Buckeye State are at a major disadvantage when it comes to finding banking institutions that will accept their legally earned cash. This financial issue is a burden for the legal pot markets across the United States, primarily because federal illegality makes the industry a risky bet for banks. But in Ohio, even state-chartered banking services are turning their backs on medical marijuana businesses.
“All of these medical marijuana enterprises are going to become targets for theft because the bad guys are going to know there’s lots of cash in these businesses,” says local Attorney David Patton, who represents a number of medical cannabis startups in the state.
Some have already been negatively impacted by these banking discrepancies. Several weeks ago, the Cleveland Branch of the National Organization for the…
