Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), who chairs the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, said Tuesday at the Milken Institute's Global Conference that the disconnect between state marijuana legalization and continued federal prohibition has created a "quandary" that only Congress can resolve.
"Congress is going to have to make it legal, because today even though the president has declassified it or reduced its impact, the truth is it is still illegal," Scott said, referring to the Trump administration's recent move to federally reschedule marijuana. As long as that remains true, he said, cannabis businesses are locked out of the federal banking system even in states where the drug is legal.
Scott cited the Secure and Fair Enforcement Regulation (SAFER) Banking Act as the legislative vehicle to address the problem. The bill would grant federal protections to banks serving state-legal cannabis businesses. The House has passed versions of it several times, but the Senate has never held a floor vote, and it has not been refiled in the 119th Congress, which began in January 2025.
Scott warned of the public-safety consequences of denying banking access: "What you don't want is to have a situation where you have these cash rooms where you have hundreds of thousands of dollars cash sitting in a location. Everyone knows you can't bank it and therefore the criminal activity is much higher in these places."
Despite making the case for reform, Scott has opposed cannabis banking legislation before, including when the Banking Committee—then under Democratic control—advanced a bill in 2023. At an American Bankers Association Washington Summit that year, he said he was "not one of those Republicans" supporting the SAFE Act, though he acknowledged a bipartisan coalition backing the effort and predicted the issue would "come to a conclusion likely in this Congress."
Scott also said he is "not agnostic" on marijuana more broadly, raising concerns about potency—claiming modern cannabis is "300 percent stronger than it was naturally"—while framing that as a separate matter from the banking debate. "There is a quandary that we have to solve," he said. "I think we'll get to a solution."
Scott ran for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination and previously served in the House, where he voted against an amendment protecting state medical cannabis programs from federal interference.
