Replies to post #16423 on OSL Holdings Inc. (fka OSLH)

[Red Ranter]

Of course....

The Senate Appropriations Committee earlier this summer passed legislation allowing banks to provide financial services to marijuana dispensaries in states where the federally prohibited drug is legal, but it’s very unlikely any major bank will take on such business until the government changes the classification of marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug, said one executive of a marijuana-based business.
As a Schedule 1 drug, marijuana is in the same category as heroin, LSD and ecstasy. Even reducing it to a Schedule 2 drug–putting it on par with oxycodone and other opiate-based painkillers–would provide some leeway for big banks to feel more comfortable about getting involved, said Steve Gormley, chief business development officer for OSL Holdings, which operates a number of marijuana industry-related businesses. Rescheduling marijuana would allow banks to “more safely approach the issue of money and more safely be able to invest directly,” he said. “At that point they won’t be dealing with Schedule 1 and the array of legal complexities and prosecutorial realities that come with that.”
Mr. Gormley said he thinks it’s unlikely President Obama will decriminalize marijuana but thinks there’s a chance he may allow it to be rescheduled or that Congress will pass legislation, as Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has been pushing for such a reclassification. More realistically, he said it will take two to five years to get marijuana reclassified, and longer to remove the federal prohibition, even though four states and the District of Columbia have legalized its use recreationally and 23 states permit medical marijuana. In the meantime, the risks of investing in marijuana-related business remain, but for those who can handle that risk the opportunities are similar to the ones seen in the years just before alcohol was made legal again after Prohibition, said Mr. Gormley. “The investment is for somebody who is visionary, has financial chops and the ego to be a pioneer in the space,” he said. In the meantime, he said medical marijuana companies need to work with doctors to track the payment process from the time growers sell pot to dispensaries to the time when doctors issue prescriptions to patients. On the recreational side, the focus needs to be on managing cash issues and working with those financial institutions–mostly credit unions–willing to take on pot-based businesses as clients.