1 yr. ago • 100%

Mastercard Move at Cannabis Shops Intensifies Call for US Decriminalization

www.commondreams.org Mastercard Move at Cannabis Shops Intensifies Call for US Decriminalization

"An industry that employs hundreds of thousands of people, provides billions in economic benefits, and promotes safer alternatives to pharmaceuticals and commonplace vices continues to be treated like a pariah," said one cannabis entrepreneur.

Mastercard's recent decision to prohibit the use of its debit cards at cannabis dispensaries highlights the challenges facing the legal marijuana industry. While the SAFE Banking Act would protect banks that work with cannabis businesses, it would not address the underlying issue of marijuana's federal illegality which was Mastercard's stated reason for the policy change. Advocates argue that comprehensive federal cannabis reform through decriminalization and legalization is ultimately needed to resolve these financial and banking issues plaguing the legal marijuana industry. Mastercard's move demonstrates that piecemeal reforms are insufficient and that full federal decriminalization is the only sustainable solution.

I hope in my lifetime we will see federal decriminalization. Enough already!

19 comments

legality hasnt stopped them from refusing to process payments for pornhub.

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- All of the porn on pornhub now is from verified sources since they forced mindgeek to purge all of their unverified content (to keep them as payment processors)
  
  Nothing wrong with taking money from porn now that they strong armed pornhub into doing what it wanted
  
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  They still dont process payments.
  
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- This is also why Tumblr maintains it's ban on porn, Visa and Mastercard exclusively process their own cards, and wield that as a weapon against what they don't like.
  
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Man that title really had me excited. For I moment I thought MasterCard was going to do the opposite and embrace legal cannabis sales.

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Well my only Mastercard got canceled due to inactivity so take that Mastercard

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- Take that, my own credit score!*
  
  FTFY
  
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Even federally legalizing cannabis could not be enough to solve the issue. International banking makes this complicated. Uruguay faces this issue, cannabis is already legalized but cash only because international banks would have to stop doing businesses with local banks otherwise. Germany is also facing this issue in it's attempt to legalize cannabis.

Now I would hope the USA is big enough of a market and has enough influence to simply change this. Especially since it's the United States Federal Reserve’s who prohibits cannabis-related operations. International provisions on money laundering would still be an issue.

But the risk is always that American banks fear losing access to certain international markets outweighs the potential earnings from dealing with cannabis operations. So again, even if they are allowed to deal with them, they might opt out of it.

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- The SAFE banking act that was supposed to be voted on the senate floor this summer session would help transition into a free market for investment in cannabis. It's been pushed till after the August recess, but apparently it has support on both sides (aside from amendments some politicians are trying to throw in).
  
  If passed it would allow banks and other investment opportunities to invest in cannabis businesses, which would likely motivate Mastercard to allow purchases.
  
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Who would've thought that MasterCard would be the unlikely ally. Well, more to the point, their greedy noses are smelling money. If it just happens to have a faint hint of ganja, so be it! Well, I guess MasterCard may be a friend here, in as much as a corporation really could be at any rate.

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- I think you misread the headline: "[MasterCard] announced this week that it has instructed U.S. financial institutions to stop allowing customers to use its debit cards to purchase marijuana products at cannabis stores..."
  
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  Honestly, our attention span is so fucked, most of us only read headlines.
  
  Source: Me, I read headlines most of the time. Too depressed to read a full article.
  
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  I'm no journalist, but that headline is a bit of a mess, come on CommonDreams, gotta step up their headline game more.
  
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MasterCard is the worst. They required like 150 manual tests for an EMV certification and used their own shitty test report format and now this?!

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What a stupid fucking decision, throwing money away and FOR WHAT???

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Time to reboot the 90s Visa ads about businesses that don't take American Express, except now it's MasterCard.

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