{"id":345404,"date":"2018-01-25T21:16:57","date_gmt":"2018-01-25T20:16:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/how-uncle-sam-launders-marijuana-money\/"},"modified":"2018-01-25T21:16:57","modified_gmt":"2018-01-25T20:16:57","slug":"how-uncle-sam-launders-marijuana-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/how-uncle-sam-launders-marijuana-money\/","title":{"rendered":"How Uncle Sam Launders Marijuana Money"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><em>In a blatant example of \u201cdo as I say, not as I do,\u201d the US government is profiting handsomely by accepting marijuana cash in the payment of taxes while imposing huge penalties on banks for accepting it as deposits. Onerous reporting requirements are driving small local banks to sell out to Wall Street. Congress needs to harmonize federal with state law. <\/em><span id=\"more-13735\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Thirty states and the District of Columbia currently have laws broadly <a href=\"http:\/\/www.governing.com\/gov-data\/state-marijuana-laws-map-medical-recreational.html\">legalizing marijuana<\/a> in some form. The herb has been shown to have\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/health-benefits-of-medical-marijuana-2014-4\">significant therapeutic value<\/a>\u00a0for a wide range of medical conditions, including cancer, Alzheimer\u2019s disease, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, glaucoma, lung disease, anxiety, muscle spasms, hepatitis C, inflammatory bowel disease, and arthritis pain. The community of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/magazine\/story\/2018\/01\/06\/jeff-sessions-marijuana-legalization-congress-216251\">Americans who rely on legal medical marijuana<\/a> was estimated to be\u00a02.6 million people\u00a0in 2016 and\u00a0includes a variety of mainstream constituency groups like veterans, senior citizens, cancer survivors, and parents of epileptic children. Unlike patented pharmaceuticals, which are now the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/naturalsociety.com\/prescriptions-drugs-now-the-leading-cause-of-death-by-overdose\/\">leading cause of death from drug overdose<\/a>, there have been\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.drugwarfacts.org\/cms\/Overdose#sthash.fXpf2xrj.dpbs\">no recorded deaths from marijuana overdose<\/a>\u00a0in the US. By comparison, alcohol causes <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mpp.org\/marijuana-is-safer\/\">30,000 deaths annually<\/a>, and prescription drugs\u00a0<em>taken as directed<\/em>\u00a0are estimated to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.alternet.org\/story\/147318\/100,000_americans_die_each_year_from_prescription_drugs,_while_pharma_companies_get_rich\">kill 100,000 Americans per year<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Under federal law, however, marijuana remains a Schedule I Controlled Substance \u2013 a \u201cdeadly dangerous drug with no medical use and high potential for abuse\u201d \u2013 and its&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/2018\/01\/how-uncle-sam-launders-marijuana-money\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a blatant example of \u201cdo as I say, not as I do,\u201d the US government is profiting handsomely by accepting marijuana cash in the payment of taxes while imposing huge penalties on banks for accepting it as deposits. Onerous reporting requirements are driving small local banks to sell out to Wall Street. Congress needs [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2525,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-345404","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2525"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345404\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}