Banks Just Say No Pot
ROMANS: The legal marijuana industry has a cash problem. Too much money and nowhere to put it. Sales are surging but banks don't want to touch this business.</s>ROMANS: Seeds, soil, grow lights, blowers. The raw materials to grow pot, but to grow the industry, it takes the oxygen provided by bank accounts, loan, lines of credit. A problem retail marijuana store owners are trying to work around.</s>LINDA ANDREWS, OWNER, LODO WELLNESS CENTER: You know, it would be nice if the banks would work with us. We're figuring out some systems. We've got safes. We don't keep it here.</s>ROMANS: So far the banks just say no. From coast to coast, bank and credit union trade groups advising their member banks to steer clear of the marijuana business. The president of the Colorado Bankers Association says there's only one remedy.</s>DON CHILDEARS, PRESIDENT, COLORADO BANKERS ASSOCIATION: It literally is going to take an act of Congress to address this.</s>ROMANS: The Obama administration recently gave the banks a green light for how to do business with legal marijuana companies. But the banks say, that guidance doesn't go far enough.</s>CHILDEARS: This light is redder than ever. It actually moved us backwards in terms of banks being able to accommodate the marijuana businesses.</s>ROMANS: Here's why, first, recreational pot is legal in Colorado and Washington. Medical marijuana in 20 states. And Washington, D.C. But under federal law, marijuana is no different than hardcore illegal drugs like heroin and ecstasy. Second, those new rules from the Obama administration say any bank doing business with a marijuana dispensary must prove the pot never makes it into the hands of children, is never trafficked to another state, is not smoked on federal property, and has absolutely no ties to the drug cartels, among other things.</s>CHILDEARS: While we don't really care to be doing the government's work for them, the bottom line is, we can't comply with that. There are simply -- there's simply no way that a bank can assert that marijuana isn't going to be used in certain fashion.</s>ROMANS: Powerful tool of capitalism unavailable to the legal pot industry until the federal law changes. (</s>On camera): What's the legal risk for a bank allowing a pot dispensary to open up a checking account, get a line of credit, you know, a loan?</s>PAUL CALLAN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, the risk is that if they're a federal bank, they could lose their charter. They could also be prosecuted under a variety of federal regulations that have to do with money laundering. They have to follow these regulations very carefully, and there's a great risk with an all-cash business like a marijuana business.</s>ROMANS (voice-over): All cash, and nowhere to put it, an increasing safety risk and quandary even the attorney general has noted.</s>ERIC HOLDER, ATTORNEY GENERAL: Huge amounts of cash, substantial amounts of cash, just kind of lying around with no place for it to be appropriately deposited. That's something that would worry me just from a law enforcement perspective.</s>ROMANS: Thousands of stores. Millions of plants. More than $2 billion in sales, but not a bank account to put it in.</s>ROMANS: So who's going to take the risk? Smaller local banks? Credit unions maybe? The National Cannabis Industry Association tells us a few banks in Colorado are exploring the idea. Insiders say, now, some dispensaries are getting bank accounts, but they're not telling anyone where, but most banks, they just say, no. The mystery will soon be solved on HBO's "True Detective" but the real mystery is how its star went from dazed and confused to romantic comedy king, to best actor. The business of being Matthew McConaughey, next.