the lower courts. As long as an operator is in compliance with state law then the federal government can’t go after compliant operators.
How does this affect the financial institutions processing cash from ‘illegal practices’?
When the Cole memo was enacted, FINCEN, the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, part of the Treasury Department that deals with money laundering etc., sent its own memo to banking institutions in the US allowing them to process money from cannabis operators, so long as they file a “suspicious activity report” stating that the money comes from cannabis operators compliant with state law. When the Cole memo was withdrawn by Jeff Sessions, the Treasury Department refused to withdraw its memo. To this day, there are still over 460 banks and credit unions in the US that deal with cannabis operators operating legally under state law, but illegally under federal law.
Is this where people are drawing parallels with the Wire Act and sports-betting?
If anyone is drawing parallels between the Wire Act and marijuana it is people in the gaming world. Some of the problems with the Wire Act falls upon the minutiae of the law. Te Supreme Court held that it broke the Anti-Commandering Doctrine. Te way the Wire Act is written
prevents state elected representatives from voting on certain laws. Te Supreme Court said that the federal government was not allowed to pass a law telling states how to vote.
Te Controlled Substances Act, which was passed in 1970, making marijuana a Class-1 drug, doesn’t have the same provisions. My view is that they don’t have the exact same legal parallels, but they do have political parallels. Te Wire Act, which has been in existence for a long time, was challenged by the states that wanted sports wagering. New Jersey passed a law that enabled it to go live the second the federal law was overturned. States have been passing laws allowing sports wagering even when it was illegal, so that they were prepared and ready to immediately go-live. States used similar tactics in relation to marijuana, but emphasised the moral imperative to drive through this legislation.
Medical marijuana’s history in the US dates back to 1996 in the state of California, when it was legalised as a being medically beneficial to AIDs patients in helping to cope with their drug regime. It was a moral judgement that drove that change and since then more and more states have realised the beneficial effects of marijuana use in cancer pain relief and CBD to bring relief to seizure sufferers. Each state that has allowed adult use of cannabis started with medical use.
It does have a parallel with sports wagering in that it has been a state-driven issue. A bottom- up approach, with states changing the agenda until the federal government’s hands are tied. I believe we are at the tipping point now whereby the US government could never successfully enforce federal cannabis restrictions, and if they tried - how does that work in congress where 33 states have legalised it for medical purposes?
What employment issues can casinos face on the subject of marijuana?
A whole host of issues intersect on this subject. One of the issues in Nevada, for example, is that casinos employ dealers, many of which have both medical marijuana patient cards and occupational licences to work in the gaming industry, but their medical marijuana patient cards violate federal law. Casino ask - can we continue to hire them?
If the employee is undergoing cancer treatment and is using cannabis medicinally, then generally an employer must try to reasonably accommodate an employee with a medical condition. Casinos also might have hotel guests who visit a dispensary and smoke in their hotel room. Another scenario that we’ve seen several times in Illinois is that an investor with shares in a casino or video gaming slot routes, might have invested in a marijuana dispensary. Does the
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