Marijuana businesses ripe for lending industry

Lawyers' Forum

By Thomas E. Howard

Thomas E. Howard graduated with a bachelor’s in history from Illinois Wesleyan University in 2002 and from Marquette University Law School in 2008. Howard concentrates his practice in banking, bankruptcy and commercial litigation with the Peoria office of Howard and Howard Attorneys PLLC. He can be reach at teh@h2law.com.

Posted May 20, 2015 2:42 PM

Federal law makes the possession and manufacture of marijuana a crime under the Controlled Substances Act. 21 U.S.C. 801, et. seq.Despite this, Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Cole issued nonbinding guidance in August 2013 regarding the government’s goals for enforcement of federal marijuana laws.The Cole memo provides bullet points on the Justice Department’s goals and deferred to traditional federalist principles for states maintaining their own laws regulating marijuana in compliance with the memo. As a …

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