The banking center of the world gets a cannabis banking hearing.
Mark your calendars for May 11. New York’s Assembly Standing Committee on Banks will hold a cannabis banking hearing. There’s not much info available beyond the broad umbrella that lays out the cannabis banking hurdles that exist because of the dissonance between state and federal law.
We reached out to the chair of the committee to learn what prompted the hearing and who (and which entities) have registered to speak.
+ More: New York lawmakers have been thinking about this issue for awhile. Last year, Sen. Jeremy Cooney, the chair of the new Senate Subcommittee on Cannabis, sponsored the Cannabis Banking and Disclosure Act. It stalled, but would have allowed the Office of Cannabis Management to disclose info about cannabis licensees and applicants to financial institutions requesting this information.
“This will allow financial institutions to have access to verify personal and financial information for their prospective cannabis clients. It will improve the ‘Know Your Customer’ compliance and make it easier and less costly for financial institutions who want to bank cannabis businesses to comply with the federal reporting,” the text of the bill read.
CBG causes blood pressure drop in mice, shows promise as treatment for high blood pressure.
Cannabigerol (CBG) is increasingly showing up in wellness formulations of cannabiniod products aimed at treating things like pain and inflammation.
Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine researchers conducted a study that suggests that repeated CBG exposure caused a drop in blood pressure in otherwise healthy mice.
“Our research suggests that cannabigerol could lower blood pressure, which could be dangerous for people with normal blood pressure,” lead author Victoria Vernail said in a statement. “On the other hand, cannabigerol could also be studied as a new way to treat high blood pressure.”
This study will be presented next week in California at the American Physiology Summit, the major annual meeting of the American Physiological Society (APS).
Regulators award $20 million toward cannabis research projects.
The Department of Cannabis Control has just selected 16 projects (out of nearly 100) for a total of $19,942,918 in support of potentially groundbreaking research.
The biggest award ($2,699,178) went to Cal Poly, Humboldt for a project called “Legacy Cannabis Genetics: People and Their Plants, a Community-Driven Study,” which is described as “a multi-disciplinary, community-based participatory research project that will identify, document, and help to preserve the history, value, and diversity of California’s rural legacy cannabis genetics and the communities that steward them.”
Only two other projects broke the $2 million mark.
One from UCLA titled “An Evaluation of Synthetic and Semi-Synthetic Cannabinoids” focuses on “the fast-emerging challenges of novel cannabinoids” and aims to “define and describe intoxication associated with the synthetic and semi-synthetic versions of what is found in cannabis plants.”
And another, from UC Irvine, titled “A Translational Study on the Short- and Long-term Effects of High-dose THC” will “collect detailed data to determine the acute effects of high-dose THC on mood, cognition, and abuse potential; characterize the absorption, distribution, and metabolism of high-dose THC; and examine whether buildup of THC in body organs causes persistent effects on physical and mental health.”