TUKWILA, Wash. – Senator Patty Murray says it’s time for congress to pass legislation to make legal marijuana businesses safer for their workers.
She urged passage of the SAFE Banking Act at a news conference in Tukwila Wednesday.
The legislation would prevent federal banking regulators from prohibiting, penalizing or discouraging banks from providing financial services to legal, state sanctioned marijuana businesses.
They also couldn’t stand in the way of loans to those businesses.
Because of federal law, legal marijuana businesses in Washington are held outside of the traditional banking system.
They’re forced to deal completely in cash which Murray says is dangerous, and sometimes fatal, to workers in the stores.
Meanwhile, a second teen suspect in the killing of a Tacoma pot shop employee last month has been arrested.
KOMO reports Seattle Police arrested the 16-year-old at a home in Kent Tuesday.
The boy and a 15-year-old already in custody are suspected in the robbery March 19th during which 29-year-old Jordan Brown was shot and killed.
The teens and other accomplices are suspected in at least a dozen violent robberies in King and Pierce Counties in recent months.