BOSTON–The recreational marijuana business will become legal in Massachusetts in July, but there won’t be any financial institutions ready to do business with them.
Stores licensed to sell recreational marijuana in Massachusetts will be opening soon, but it will be a cash business, meaning the Bay State will be facing the same issues around security and crime that other states have also experienced and continue to experience.
The Boston Globe reported that not a single financial institution in the state has indicated it will provide financial services to the cannabis businesses that are set to open following earlier voter approval.
The absence of financial access and the large amount of cash involved is a “major concern,” David Torrisi told the Globe. Torrisi is executive director of the Commonwealth Dispensary Association, which runs medical marijuana dispensaries and expects to soon receive state licenses to sell recreational pot. “We could open without banking, but we’d really rather not,” he told the publication.
The Globe reported that Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission Chairman Steve Hoffman has met repeatedly with local banks and credit unions to encourage them to do business with companies licensed by his agency. No bank or credit union has indicated it will do so.
‘Something I’d Like to Fix’
“People were there — they were listening, they were asking questions, they took my business card,” Hoffman told the Globe of his meetings with financial executives. “A lot of people who run banks and credit unions are thinking about it. . . . I don’t think it’s a crisis as much as something I’d like to fix.”
One bank, Medford-based Century Bank, is currently the only institution working with medical dispensaries in Massachusetts.
“We are preparing for an increase in our cash business, with plans for increased capacity for vault storage and security,” Keith Cooper, the chief executive of Revolutionary Clinics, told the Boston Globe.