Colorado Marijuana: State Urges AG Sessions To Let Industry Use Banks

DENVER, CO — State officials in Colorado would like U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to know that their marijuana industry is working well, — and improving — but could be even better if those in the industry were allowed to use the federal banking system.

Gov. John Hickenlooper and Attorney General Cynthia Coffman sent a letter Thursday to Sessions urging him to work with recreational pot states on law enforcement and on providing the industry access to banks. The pot industry currently depends on cash because the federal government still considers the drug illegal. Sessions also has mentioned possibly cracking down on marijuana legalization.

Hickenlooper and Coffman said Colorado's first-in-the-nation recreational industry is robust and the state has taken steps to curb black market sales, diversion to other states and youth use, they said. (For more information on this and other neighborhood stories, subscribe to Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

"Colorado's system has become a model for other states and nations," Hickenlooper and Coffman wrote. Voter-approved sales began in 2014.

Sessions recently sent letters to the governors of Colorado, Alaska, Oregon and Washington — the first four states to legalize recreational marijuana — detailing his concerns with how effective state regulatory efforts are. All have defended their efforts.

Hickenlooper and Coffman addressed several of Sessions' concerns:

—Diversion: They noted that Colorado has sophisticated seed-to-sale tracking, has capped individual plant cultivation, banned pot growing cooperatives and provided $6 million this year for local police actions targeting the black market.

—Minors: They insisted that several surveys suggest marijuana consumption by youth has not increased since legalization — and that one federal report, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, suggests it has declined. Colorado has spent more than $22 million on education, they said.

—Motor vehicle fatalities: Hickenlooper and Coffman reported the number of drivers considered by the state's highway patrol to be pot-impaired dropped by 21 percent over the first six months of 2017, compared to the same period last year.

"We stand ready to work with our federal partners to fortify what we have built," they wrote.

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