TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — Marijuana has been legal in Arizona for several years while Federal authorities classed it among the hardest of hard drugs. Now the Feds are making a major change—and it’s bringing important changes for legal cannabis dispensaries.
The world of marijuana has changed a lot since Arizona and many other states made it legal for adults. You see it professionally packaged in retail outlets now and now some changes on the Federal regulation level mean big changes for the marijuana industry.
For almost 60 years the Federal government put marijuana in the same class and heroin—Schedule 1, highly addictive, no medical value.
Now the US Justice Department calls marijuana schedule 3. That means it has medical values and less risk of abuse. On the Federal level cannabis will still be regulated like a prescription drug but more like meds like Tylenol with Codeine.
For researchers it means more ability to use cannabis to work towards better prescription drugs.
For licenced marijuana dispensaries it means a change to operate more like a normal business.
“I think there’ll be a lot more banks willing to work with the cannabis industry.”
Moe Asnani is a partner with D2 Dispensaries. He says dispensaries have been able to accept cash and debit cards only because when Federal law enforcement classed cannabis with the hardest illegal drugs banks were afraid to offer normal business services like credit card processing.
He says the reclassification should convince banks to process cards for dispensaries; and that may bring in more customers.
“I think it makes it so that more people will be willing to come here. They’ll get points and things like that, that they weren’t able to get before credit card rewards. I also think that the stigma of cannabis, when it comes to gun rights, when it comes to other things like potentially HSAs (Health Savings Accounts) and FSAs (Flexible Spending Accounts) in the future may be impacted, but that is all to be determined.”
Declan Feeney says he’s content to pay cash but thinks accepting credit cards is an important change for dispensaries.
“On the Federal classification level, having credit cards and banking, being able to openly purchase marijuana, I think, is good, and it sort of helps further decriminalize it and further destigmatize it.”
The change will not come right away. Moe Ansari says dispensaries need to register with the Drug Enforcement Administration, then banks should be willing to service cannabis businesses.
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Craig Smith is a reporter for KGUN 9. With more than 40 years of reporting in cities like Tampa, Houston and Austin, Craig has covered more than 40 Space Shuttle launches and covered historic hurricanes like Katrina, Ivan, Andrew and Hugo. Share your story ideas and important issues with Craig by emailing craig.smith@kgun9.com or by connecting on Facebook and Twitter.