Marijuana industry taking fight against Wall Street blockades straight to Trump

Pot Inc. is gearing up to foyer the Trump administration – and press its case that the president’s executive order declaring marijuana a drug useful for medical purposes is being thwarted by Wall Street, On The Money has realized.

As reported by The Post, people at big banks – JPMorgan, Bank of America and Citigroup – have said the Trump govt order “reclassifying” pot from its earlier heroin-like Schedule 1 level to a so-called Schedule 3 drug like Tylenol with codeine stops short of giving them the authority to “bank” the marijuana industry.

Specifically, the bankers have argued that Pot Inc.’s far-bigger potential business – leisure use that would come with the smoking of joints and ingesting high-inducing gummies – wasn’t particularly addressed by the president’s edict, which instead centered on medical makes use of. 

Pot Inc. is gearing up to foyer the Trump administration – and press its case that the president’s govt order declaring marijuana a drug useful for medical functions is being thwarted by Wall Street. Jack Forbes / NY Post Design

Accordingly, bankers have pleaded to pot entrepreneurs that their palms are tied and stay unwilling to offer essential providers such as lending and bank card transactions.

According to a JP Morgan memo obtained by On The Money, a top govt at the bank told one potential pot shopper that “The feedback I’ve received is that it’s still too early to reconsider our position, and we will not change our stance until it is formally classified as a Schedule III drug and the law changes.”

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Trump signed the pot EO on Dec. 18, however to completely implement it, US Attorney General Pam Bondi must finalize the order, which she has not. As AG of Florida, Bondi opposed pot legalization, even as most other states have moved to loosen marijuana legal guidelines. 

Meanwhile, people conversant in insurance policies of the two major US stock exchanges, the NYSE and Nasdaq, say their inside guidelines still stop the “listing” of US marijuana corporations to commerce domestically.

President Trump signed the pot govt order on Dec. 18 AP

Nasdaq lists a quantity of Canada-based pot corporations however only because they’re domiciled outdoors the US and don’t promote their product domestically.

Pot Inc., isn’t glad. Marc Cohodes, a former hedge fund supervisor and investor in hashish associated companies, had been a main advocate of the Trump EO and says the big banks are now violating the spirit of Trump’s ruling, a point he’ll make to White House officers imminently.

Cohodes claims the banks are misreading the Trump EO. Cohodes pointed to the comments of Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the White House’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services after Trump issued his EO, which opened medical marijuana for to be equipped by the authorities by way of Medicare and Medicaid applications.

Marc Cohodes, a former hedge fund supervisor and investor in hashish associated companies, had been a main advocate of the Trump EO and says the big banks are now violating the spirit of Trump’s ruling. Reisner, Rebecca

“The medical market Dr Oz spoke about is an incremental $35 Billion and last I looked CMS doesn’t pay business up front in cash. Someone is going to supply the government with medical creams, which means this industry needs to be banked,” Cohodes added.

Press officers at JP Morgan, Nasdaq and NYSE declined requests for remark. A White House press rep had no instant remark.

“The industry is going to be banked whether they want to or not because Trump wants it to be banked,” Cohodes tells On The Money. “How can an industry producing a product that has medical usage and has a product eligible for Medicaid and Medicare, not be banked?”

Cohodes likewise claims that “Trump hates the fact that US pot companies employing US workers, paying US taxes can’t get listed on any exchange but Canadian companies can.”

Pot Inc. is a $60 billion industry, and its top gamers and advocates like Chodes believed placing the drug in a low-level federal class would result in an explosion of growth for dispensaries, farms and numerous weed-related merchandise. 

Without federal buy-in on Pot Inc., marijuana corporations face important hurdles of their deliberate expansion since banking providers are regulated in Washington.

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