The GOP senator who is set to take the lead on sponsoring a marijuana banking bill this session says he’s not currently focused on advancing the reform amid other competing priorities—and that his tentative timeline for having conversations about moving it is “hopefully in the fall.”

“That’s a tomorrow thing,” Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) told Marijuana Moment this week, referencing the Secure and Fair Enforcement Regulation (SAFER) Banking Act. He said Congress is currently preoccupied with passing a budget reconciliation package known as the “Big Beautiful Bill.”

Asked if that meant he intended to take up the cannabis legislation after lawmakers finalize their work on the budget bill and appropriations legislation, he said “exactly.”

“Hopefully in the fall. In the fall,” said Moreno, who is leading the SAFER Banking Act for the first time as a freshman senator after Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) passed him the torch.

Action—or inaction—on the marijuana banking bill has been a consistent source of frustration for advocates and industry stakeholders, who have characterized it as a commonsense public safety imperative that would normalize an ever-expanding sector of the economy.

The legislation, which cleared a Senate committee last session and passed the House multiple times over the years, would prevent federal financial regulators from penalizing banks simply for working with state-legal cannabis businesses.

Marijuana Moment reached out to the lead House sponsor of the SAFER Banking Act, Rep. Dave Joyce (R-OH), to see if Moreno’s timeline aligns with his own, but a representative was not immediately available.

In January, Joyce’s office told Marijuana Moment that he would be filing the cannabis banking legislation this session but that its introduction was “not imminent” as some earlier reports had suggested.

A leading anti-marijuana group recently sounded the alarm about a possible attempt to put the cannabis banking measure in a cryptocurrency bill that was advancing on the Senate floor, but that didn’t come to fruition.

With Republicans in control of both chambers and key leadership positions filled by opponents of marijuana legalization, it’s been an open question about whether any cannabis reform legislation stands a chance of passage in the short-term. That’s despite the fact that President Donald Trump endorsed marijuana industry banking access, federal rescheduling and a Florida legalization initiative on the campaign trail. However, he’s been silent on the issue since taking office.

On the House side, a Republican lawmaker said in March he’s hopeful that Congress will be able to get a marijuana banking bill across “the finish line” this session, arguing that the current barriers to financial services for the industry represent a “second tier” of prohibition.

Cannabis industry banking challenges came up in several congressional hearings in March, including a Senate Banking Committee meeting on debanking where senators on both sides of the aisle addressed the lack of financial services access for marijuana businesses.

Meanwhile, in January congressional researchers released a report detailing the subject of debanking—while making a point to address how the marijuana industry’s financial services access problem “sits at the nexus” of a state-federal policy conflict that complicates the debate.

Separately, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) announced in December that it’s convening focus groups comprised of marijuana businesses to better understand their experiences with access to banking services under federal prohibition.

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The industry remains frustrated with the lack of progress on the cannabis banking issue under the last administration.

A Senate source told Marijuana Moment in December that Republican House and Senate leadership “openly and solely blocked” then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) attempt to include the bill in a government funding bill as the session came to a close.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) had challenged the idea that there was enough GOP support for the SAFER Banking Act to pass on the Senate floor during the lame duck session.

Warren accused certain Republican members of overstating support for the legislation within their caucus, while also taking a hit at Trump for doing “nothing” on cannabis reform during his time in office as he makes a policy pivot ahead of the election by coming out in support of the marijuana banking bill and federal rescheduling.

Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-CO) also recently argued in an interview with Marijuana Moment that the main barrier to getting the marijuana banking bill across the finish line is a lack of sufficient Republican support in the chamber. And he said if Trump is serious about seeing the reform he recently endorsed enacted, he needs to “bring us some Republican senators.”

Prior to becoming House speaker, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) consistently opposed cannabis reform, including on incremental issues like cannabis banking and making it easier to conduct scientific research on the plant.

Meanwhile, on the one-year anniversary of a Senate committee’s passage of the SAFER Banking Act in September, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released an analysis on the economic impact of the reform, including the likely increase in federally insured deposits from cannabis businesses by billions of dollars once banks receive protections for servicing the industry.

Separately, the CEO of the financial giant JPMorgan Chase said recently that the company “probably would” start providing banking services to marijuana businesses if federal law changed to permit it.

The LCB contributed reporting from Washington, D.C. 

Silk Road Drug Market Operator Pardoned By Trump Calls For More Prisoners To Be Freed, As Democrats Criticize His Clemency

State legislatures considered a number of criminal justice reform bills around marijuana this year, but most ultimately failed to make it across the finish line—a trend advocates at the nonprofit Last Prisoner Project (LPP) are calling the “hidden crisis in cannabis reform.”

“Across the country, state legislatures introduced more than a dozen bills aimed at righting the wrongs of cannabis criminalization. But most of them died quietly,” the organization says. “This is the untold story of cannabis reform in 2025: legalization is advancing, but justice is still being denied. People are profiting off an industry that others are still being punished for—and many statehouses are failing to act.”

In Florida, Georgia, Alaska and Missouri, for example, bills to seal past criminal cannabis records and expedite the release of people incarcerated on marijuana offenses fell short, says the review by LPP. Similarly, longtime efforts to expunge cannabis convictions in Massachusetts and New York also failed to move forward.

Virginia lawmakers, meanwhile, passed a resentencing bill that would have lightened marijuana penalties retroactively, but Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), who’s scuttled numerous drug reform bills during his time in office, ultimately vetoed the measure.

“While public support for expungement and release is stronger than ever, political action has largely stalled,” LPP’s director of policy, Adrian Rocha, said in a statement to Marijuana Moment. “We’ve seen dozens of bills introduced this year that would have provided meaningful relief, but many were quietly buried without so much as a hearing.”

“We can’t celebrate a legal cannabis industry while thousands still live with the weight of criminal records, or remain behind bars, for doing something that is now perfectly legal,” he added. “If lawmakers are serious about equity, it’s time to stop delaying and start delivering on the promises of cannabis justice.”

But it’s not all bad news, Rocha said, pointing to examples of “bright spots that prove what’s possible when advocates, lawmakers, and communities come together.”

“In Maryland and Hawai’i,” for example, he said, “we witnessed landmark victories that expand access to record relief and demonstrate how cannabis justice can be implemented effectively.”

In Maryland, Gov. Wes Moore (D) signed a series of cannabis bills into law in April, including one to require state officials to automatically shield records for low-level marijuana convictions that have been pardoned from public access, and to more broadly expand expungement eligibility for certain other offenses.

“I want to be very clear: This is not about letting criminals or repeat offenders off the hook. It’s about common sense,” Moore said at the time. “The people who will be helped out by this reform are our neighbors and our parents, even people in our congregation. They’re people who just want to move forward but keep hitting a wall made of paperwork.”

Heather Warnken, executive director of the University of Baltimore School of Law’s Center for Criminal Justice Reform, said that people in Maryland had been “living with the unconscionable reality that any probation violation, from a missed appointment to even decades-old possession of small amounts of now legal cannabis, categorically barred them from ever expunging their record.”

“The Expungement Reform Act has addressed this and more, removing barriers to opportunity for thousands held back by their past record,” she continued. “Like Gov. Moore’s historic mass pardon, this victory is the product of true partnership, and an incredible step forward for our state.”

Last June, Moore pardoned more than 175,000 convictions for low-level marijuana and paraphernalia offenses—a sweeping clemency action granted about a year after the state implemented cannabis legalization. This month, he also issued another mass pardon for people with past marijuana possession convictions, granting clemency to about 7,000 more people on the holiday Juneteenth that commemorates the end of slavery.

In Hawaii this session, meanwhile, lawmakers enacted a new law to help speed the expungement process for people hoping to clear their records of past marijuana-related offenses. The law aims to expedite expungements happening through a pilot program that became law last year.

“I believe Hawai’i has an obligation to ensure that individuals who continue to suffer the consequences of an outdated law have an opportunity to finally move on with their lives,” Rep. David Tarnas (D), the bill’s sponsor, said in a comment to Marijuana Moment. “This bill will eliminate the need for extensive manual searches and ensure that more people receive the relief they deserve without unnecessary delays.”

“It’s time to stop punishing people for conduct that’s no longer considered a crime,” he said, “and start restoring their dignity and providing them with opportunities.”

In Maine and Minnesota, LPP noted, criminal justice reform bills are “still in play—but the path to passage remains uncertain.”

Advocates also pointed to Texas, where lawmakers both passed a measure to expand medical marijuana as well as a widespread ban on hemp products containing any detectable amount of THC.

It remains to be seen whether Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) will sign the hemp ban legislation.

“The scales of justice in Texas are at a tipping point, but which direction they will tip is still up in the air,” said Jeannette McKenzie, board member and director of the Texas Cannabis Collective. “It’s hard to celebrate expanded medical access when we’re simultaneously expanding criminalization for the same plant.”

“People want and deserve the freedom to use and enjoy cannabis on their own terms free from tyrannical government prosecution,” she added.

Last Prisoner Project has long pushed for legalization of cannabis to include measures meant to address past drug war harms. In May, the group organized a coalition of marijuana reform advocates that held an event outside the White House to urge President Donald Trump to free those still incarcerated over cannabis.

The rally was part of a “Cannabis Unity Week of Action” helmed by LPP that also involved congressional lawmakers who’ve spoken about their own efforts to advance reform on Capitol Hill. It featured multiple speakers who shared stories about their personal experiences with the criminal justice system and their advocacy work, making the case to the administration that now is the time to put a definitive end to marijuana criminalization.

At the federal level, Trump is facing pressure on multiple fronts to fulfill campaign pledges and expand on cannabis clemency that has been achieved under his first time, as well as under the Biden administration. And in many cases, it’s those who’ve been directly impacted by criminalization who are leading the charge.

In April, for example, an activist who received a pardon for a marijuana-related conviction during Trump’s first term paid a visit to the White House, discussing future clemency options with the recently appointed “pardon czar.”

Other former marijuana prisoners who received clemency from Trump during his first term in office staged a separate event outside the White House last month, expressing gratitude for the relief they were given and calling on the new administration to grant the same kind of help to others who are still behind bars for cannabis.

GOP Marijuana Banking Bill Sponsor Says He’s Not Thinking About Advancing It Until The Fall Amid Competing Priorities

[PRESS RELEASE] – PHOENIX, June 16, 2025 – Jungle Boys, the acclaimed cannabis cultivators known for their artisanal practices and elite genetics, will open their first Arizona dispensary on Saturday, June 21. The grand opening marks the brand’s 20th retail location nationwide and its debut in the Grand Canyon State.

The store, a collaboration with Story Cannabis, located at 3830 N. 7th St. in Phoenix, will open its doors at 8 a.m. To celebrate, there will be a live DJ, coffee, and tacos until 2 p.m. The first customer in line will receive a Jungle Boys-branded duffle bag filled with $500 worth of merch, and the first 300 people to shop will receive a gift with their purchase.

Jungle Boys originated as a small grow operation dedicated to producing clean, high-quality cannabis. What began as a garage grow in Los Angeles evolved into a nationally recognized brand; the Jungle Boys are known for their pheno-hunting expertise and growing some of the most sought-after strains.

The Phoenix location is housed in the historic former Audio Recorders of Arizona building—a site once frequented by legendary musicians. The space has been reimagined with bold desert-inspired murals, saloon-style design elements, and signature Jungle Boys characters, paying homage to Arizona’s western charm and the brand’s distinct visual identity.

The dispensary will include a Jungle Boys clothing section, an express pickup window, and a curated menu featuring top-shelf flower, and a variety of products from both Jungle Boys and other select cannabis brands.

Featured strains include:

• Blam (Blue Sherb x Runtz x LCG) – A terpene-rich hybrid with vibrant purple hues and a fruity, creamy flavor profile. THC: 25.83%
• Blu Zerdz (Blu Frootz x LCZ) – A candy-forward hybrid with dense, frosty buds and euphoric effects. THC: 27.6%
• Raspado (Sherb Cream Pie x Biscotti #15) – A flavor-heavy hybrid with dessert-like undertones and a smooth, mellow high. THC: 19.43%
• Zazooka (Gelato #33 x Zkittlez) – A loud, aromatic hybrid known for its rich flavor and balanced effects. THC: 26.1%

Jungle Boys has built a strong following among cannabis connoisseurs for its meticulous growing methods, small-batch production, and dedication to sharing cultivation knowledge with the wider community. Currently operating 14 stores in Florida and several locations across California, the brand remains family-owned and committed to delivering unmatched quality to patients and consumers across every community it serves.

For more information about the grand opening or Jungle Boys products, visit www.jungleboys.com or follow @jungleboys on social media.