In 2024, the landscape for cannabis legalization, regulation and banking continued to evolve. CRB Monitor founder and CEO Steve Kemmerling outlined some of the movements that took place last year in a guest article for ACAMS Today, the magazine for the international anti-money laundering organization ACAMS.
“While state-level legalization efforts failed in Florida, North Dakota and South Dakota in November, the sense of many in the regulated cannabis market was that support toward federal rescheduling of cannabis, and passing the Secure and Fair Enforcement Regulation (SAFER) Banking Act and a benign Farm Bill reauthorization, remained strong with the new administration and Congress, and could bring significant change to the cannabis industry in 2025,” Kemmerling wrote.
As approximately 80% of Americans now live in a cannabis-regulated state, according to Pew Research Center, the article provided an outlook on:
- The SAFER Banking Act
- Rescheduling
- The Farm Bill
- Challenges to the hemp industry
The article also highlighted a Congressional Budget Office report that estimated that SAFE banking legislation, if passed, could increase insured banking deposits by $2.9 billion and credit union deposits by $475 million over 10 years.
Read more about last year’s banking and legislative initiatives in “The Status of Cannabis Banking in 2024.”