Senator Files Bill To Provide Marijuana Businesses With Federal Small Business Loans And Assistance That Other Industries Get
A U.S. senator has filed a new bill that would allow state-legal marijuana businesses to access certain federal Small Business Administration (SBA) loans and services that are available to companies in any other industry.
Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) introduced the legislation on Thursday, amid a week of significant congressional activity on cannabis reform issues.
The senator’s proposal would prevent SBA from denying a series of loans and other services—including disaster relief, microloans and technical assistance—to businesses solely because they are involved in state-legal cannabis markets.
“The unfair barriers to basic federal support and resources have hurt our state’s legally-operating cannabis small businesses,” Rosen told Marijuana Moment. “This legislation will level the playing field so that cannabis small businesses—including those owned by people of color, women, and veterans—have access to the same federal resources and loans that other legal businesses are entitled to.”
The “Fair Access for Cannabis Small Businesses Act” contains similar provisions to a House bill filed last year by Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-NY), though that legislation also contained broader language to remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).
The new bill does’t have those federal legalization provisions, but it would amend the Small Business Act to add language to various sections stipulating that loans and services can’t be denied “solely because the borrower is a cannabis-related legitimate business or service provider.”
Rosen’s legislation also includes a couple additional amendments to the Small Business Act that were not included in Velázquez’s bill, such as ensuring that cannabis businesses can access “assistance from resource partners” and service providers like small business development centers, women’s business centers and veteran business outreach centers.
.A section on SBA technical assistance would also be uniquely amended under Rosen’s bill to support the cannabis industry.
“For Black and brown communities that have been ravaged by the war on drugs for decades, there is a light at the end of the tunnel as the end of cannabis prohibition comes near,” U.S. Cannabis Council (USCC) CEO Khadijah Tribble said in a press release on Friday. “But without access to capital through financing tools like SBA loans, most Black and brown cannabis entrepreneurs won’t get the chance to profit from an industry that was once used to stigmatize them—even in states where the plant has been legalized.”
