Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act, 2015
Floor Speech
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Mr. FLEMING. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to stop the implementation of Treasury guidance that is in direct conflict with the Federal anti-money laundering statutes.
On February 14, 2014, the Department of the Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, FinCEN, issued compliance guidance for ``Bank Secrecy Act, BSA, expectations for financial institutions seeking to provide services to marijuana-related businesses.''
I am concerned that Treasury forgot one detail: the Bank Secrecy Act and Federal anti-money laundering laws are explicitly clear that banks and financial institutions may not engage in marijuana-related transactions.
Despite trending State laws, Federal law remains unchanged. The Controlled Substances Act prohibits the manufacture, possession, and distribution of marijuana. Anything but compliance with the CSA, the law of the land, will trigger criminal anti-money laundering penalties, fines, and possible incarceration for perpetrators.
Instead of issuing guidance to reinforce Federal prohibitions, the FinCEN memo offers banks ways to report suspicion activities as required under Federal law, while blatantly ignoring the fact that banks are not allowed to participate in any marijuana transactions, without exceptions. In other words, instead of enforcing the law, there is just a suspicion alert sent out, which we don't even know if anyone is even going to pay attention to. The very act of depositing drug money runs afoul of Federal law.
Mr. Chairman, it is important to note that the Department of Justice also issued a memo in 2014, ``Guidance Regarding Marijuana Financial Crimes.'' This separate memo reinforces Federal law and outlines possible prosecution and criminal offense for ``transactions involving proceeds generated by marijuana-related conduct.''
My amendment would stop the Department of the Treasury from implementing their February 2014 guidance, which is confusing and is actually creating problems throughout the industry. And it is the government, again, it is the administration not enforcing its own laws. This is nothing short of tacit approval for money laundering, all the while encouraging banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions to engage in illegal and criminal activities.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I would like to yield some time to my good friend from Florida (Mr. Crenshaw).
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Mr. FLEMING. Mr. Chairman, first of all, it is absolutely a fact that marijuana, the use of marijuana and the sale of marijuana, is against federal law. Now, you may want to change that law, but that is the law.
Also, our banking system, even those that are State banks, State charter banks, fall under a Federal banking system.
You are talking about money laundering. Well, what about other drugs? What about heroin? What about methamphetamines? Should we also have exemptions and carve-outs for those as well? Why even have a system that detects money laundering and actually enforces that if we are going to begin to create exemptions and carve-outs for that as well?
Also, I would remind folks that with regard to medical marijuana, that is still very controversial. The reason why marijuana is still a Schedule I drug, illegal, is that it is neither known nor accepted by authorities that raw marijuana has an acceptable medical use.
Now, yes, extracts of marijuana, even Marinol--which is synthetic THC--is a schedule III, like hydrocodone, and that can be prescribed and monitored by a physician. There is no problem with that, and the money can go into any banking system.
So if there are beneficial parts of the marijuana, we can extract that and create medication from it, whether it is liquid or tablet, injection or whatever, and then that will certainly be delivered, prescribed by physicians.
I urge a ``yes'' vote on this amendment.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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