Senator Files Bill To Make Cannabis Businesses Eligible For SBA Loans

Democratic U.S. Senator Jacky Rosen of Nevada final week launched laws that will make regulated hashish companies eligible for loans and different applications from the federal Small Enterprise Administration (SBA). If handed, the Truthful Entry for Hashish Small Companies Act would assist make sure that licensed hashish companies have entry to the identical advantages accessible to different authorized companies, together with the SBA’s widespread 7(a) loans, catastrophe loans, microloans and the Small Enterprise Funding Firm (SBIC) program. The laws additionally ensures that companies within the regulated marijuana business have entry to the SBA’s useful resource companions such because the SCORE enterprise mentoring program, Veterans Enterprise Outreach Facilities and Ladies’s Enterprise Facilities.

Rosen has been an outspoken advocate for permitting companies within the authorized hashish business entry to banking providers and sources provided by the SBA. Underneath present SBA rules, companies that present “direct or oblique services or products that support the use, development, or enhancement of hashish from accessing SBA loans and applications,” in response to a press release from the senator’s workplace.

“The unfair limitations to fundamental federal help and sources have damage our state’s legally-operating hashish small companies,” Rosen said on November 18. “This laws will degree the enjoying subject in order that hashish small companies – together with these owned by individuals of shade, ladies, and veterans– have entry to the identical federal sources and loans that different authorized companies are entitled to.”

Increasing Alternatives For Hashish Companies

In 2021, Rosen highlighted the necessity for increasing entry to SBA sources to hashish small companies working legally beneath state legislation whereas questioning then-nominee for SBA Administrator Isabel Guzman, who was subsequently permitted by the Senate. And earlier this yr, she despatched a letter urging the Senate Appropriations Committee to incorporate language stopping the SBA from excluding legally operated hashish small companies from its mortgage and entrepreneurship applications. Rosen additionally beforehand led a bipartisan letter to Home and Senate Armed Providers Committee management in December 2021, urging fellow lawmakers to maintain provisions of the Safe and Truthful Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act within the fiscal 2022 Nationwide Protection Appropriations Act.

“Lack of entry to capital and banking providers stay the best limitations to entry into the hashish business,” stated Layke Martin, government director of the Nevada Hashish Affiliation. “We’re grateful for Senator Rosen’s efforts to help small hashish companies by growing entry to SBA loans and applications.”

Khadijah Tribble, the CEO of the commerce group the US Hashish Council (USCC), praised the introduction of the Truthful Entry for Hashish Small Companies Act, saying that legalizing marijuana alone just isn’t sufficient to deal with the harms brought on by almost a century of marijuana prohibition.

“For Black and Brown communities which were ravaged by the warfare on medication for many years, there’s a gentle on the finish of the tunnel as the top of hashish prohibition comes close to. However with out entry to capital by means of financing instruments like SBA loans, most Black and brown hashish entrepreneurs gained’t get the possibility to revenue from an business that was as soon as used to stigmatize them — even in states the place the plant has been legalized,” Tribble said in a press release from the USCC. “Senator Rosen’s landmark laws would assist advance fairness and innovation within the hashish business by leveling the enjoying subject for unbiased hashish operators. If paired with the SAFE Banking Act, The Truthful Entry for Hashish Small Companies Act would create a regulatory framework that will guarantee a vibrant startup scene and a variety of gamers.”