This is the Kader Daily Podcast for Thursday, July 18th,

2024. I'm Caleb Brown.

We've been waiting a long time for the end of federal cannabis prohibition, most Americans

favor it even as most Americans can access some form of legal cannabis.

The federal prohibition maintains several serious problems for those attempting to comply with the law.

In his latest piece in Cato's Free Society magazine, Paul Best details two big problems

that would come to an end with the end of Cannabis Prohibition.

You talk about two big issues here with respect to our current state of

Cannabis prohibition at the federal level. One is cash and the

fact that so many retailers who sell cannabis because of federal law don't have access to a lot of

banking services or the network that would otherwise allow them to not have to do

that and the other is research and the significant hurdles to research. So I want to take those in turn.

So what is it? What is the status of cannabis that prevents people who are selling it legally in dozens of states from

taking credit cards or other forms of payment.

Well the banks are afraid of the feds.

There's a whole web of laws and regulations from the Bank Secrecy Act to the Controlled

Substances Act that essentially make banks afraid to do business with

marijuana companies even when they are in state authorized markets. So if you live in

one of the two dozen states that now have legalized

recreational marijuana, you'll notice that almost always you have to use cash

whenever you pay a visit to these businesses.

And what this ultimately means for these businesses, which are again,

...