Stanley Jutkowitz and Susan Ryan
The SAFE Banking Act is now not within the Nationwide Protection Authorization Act and subsequently won’t cross on this Congress. For weeks, each business sources and Congressional sources have been predicting that SAFE would cross within the lame duck session. As late as this previous Friday, we heard from two completely different sources who attended a gathering with Democratic Senate leaders that SAFE would cross within the lame duck session.
After which got here DOJ. Firstly of December the Division of Justice issued a memorandum describing its issues with SAFE. This, coupled with Sen. Mitch McConnell’s opposition to something marijuana (common readers will recall he referred to marijuana as hemp’s “illicit cousin which I select to not embrace”), was sufficient to coalesce Republican opposition to together with SAFE within the NDAA.
There’s a likelihood, albeit slim, that SAFE may very well be included in an Omnibus invoice that Congress will attempt to cross earlier than the tip of this legislative session, however given the opposition to SAFE and the truth that there are six legislative days left on this session of Congress, we don’t imagine it is going to occur.
