Marijuana Industry Lobbies Congress for Tax, Banking Changes

The delegation from the National Cannabis Industry Association made a point of dressing well for its day on Capitol Hill, sporting mostly dark suits, lots of ties and plenty of the group’s signature lapel pins, which feature a sun rising over vibrant fields of marijuana.

 
Marijuana advocates have come to lobby Washington before, often to argue for more lenient treatment under federal law. But on Thursday, buoyed by a flurry of state decisions that have expanded the legal use of marijuana, the cannabis crowd came less as social activists than as entrepreneurs, asking Congress to remove some of the obstacles that stand in the way of their fledgling businesses.
 
They met with staff members to ask for changes to the tax code, which prohibits the businesses from taking standard deductions for expenses. And they huddled in congressional offices to make the case for other changes that would encourage banks to work with legal cannabis businesses.
 
If their aims seemed mundane, even technical, it was a measure of how far the marijuana movement has come in just a few years. Medical marijuana is now legal in 20 states and the District of Columbia. Last year, Colorado and Washington state made marijuana fully legal for adults, and similar efforts are gathering steam elsewhere in the country. Colorado collected about $2 million in marijuana taxes in January, the first month that sales for recreational use were permitted — a detail that was mentioned often Thursday.