Justice Dept. Reversal to Make Banking Harder for Pot Businesses

The Justice Department’s decision to reverse a federal “hands-off” policy on state marijuana oversight is expected to further complicate efforts by pot-related businesses to obtain banking services.

“This could have a chilling effect,” Don Childears, president of the Colorado Banking Association, told Bloomberg BNA Jan. 5 “It will motivate some to back up and some to perhaps even retreat. A lot of banks will go into a holding pattern to see what will happen.”

In Colorado, the first state with legal recreational marijuana, about two dozen financial institutions provide services to marijuana related businesses — “all of them small and ...