Patrick McMahon
Co-founder
The OG Collective
Cathedral City, CA
We’re a full two months into adult-use cannabis sales here in the Golden State. These last nine weeks have been incredibly exciting and things seem to be going pretty smoothly, considering the massive shift happening in the industry.The state government has been doing an excellent job in rolling out this significant undertaking. But one of the major issues that has always been part of the industry has really come to the forefront, and that is the banking issue.
A massive amount of cash changes hands every single day in the cannabis industry throughout the great state of California. There are cultivation and manufacturing companies that have gross sales that extend to tens of millions of dollars. That is an unfathomable amount of cash to have on hand. One of the main reasons places like liquor stores are consistently robbed is because they always have a large amount of cash on hand.
It is imperative for California to figure out a way to create a state-backed bank that will allow cannabis businesses to function like any other business. Not only are they putting the lives of licensed operators on the line, but banking — or the lack thereof — is the scarlet letter of our industry. It is the reason why many legitimate investors won’t enter the industry and it creates a stigma of being a “shady” business.
California can set the standard for the entire industry by figuring out a way for us to make deposits, write checks and transfer money from bank to bank. We go out of our way to do the right thing. We are the most heavily regulated business on the planet, yet we are essentially “cash only.”
We need to get banking on cannabis before something terrible happens.