Medical Marijuana and Money Laundering
Short video featuring John Hudak, Jeffrey Miron & Julie Hill
Short video featuring John Hudak, Jeffrey Miron & Julie Hill
Medical marijuana may be legal in many states, but federally, it is still illegal. This means that banks run the risk of being charged with money laundering or other crimes for working with what the federal government considers an illicit activity. This creates a precarious situation where billions of dollars of state-licensed marijuana profits are handled almost exclusively in cash. What are the laws the set up this framework? What problems does this create? What is the solution? Three experts weigh in.
As always, the Federalist Society takes no position on particular legal or public policy issues; all expressions of opinion are those of the speaker.
Featuring:
Deputy Director - Center for Effective Public Management; Senior Fellow - Governance Studies, The Brookings Institution
John Hudak is deputy director of the Center for Effective Public Management and a senior fellow in Governance Studies. His research examines questions of presidential power in the contexts of administration, personnel, and public policy. Additionally, he focuses on campaigns and elections, legislative-executive interaction, and state and federal marijuana policy.
John’s 2016 book, Marijuana: A Short History, offers a unique, up-to-date profile of how cannabis emerged from the shadows of counterculture and illegality to become a serious, even mainstream, public policy issue and source of legal revenue for both businesses and governments. In it, he describes why attitudes and policy have changed, and what those changes mean for marijuana's future place in society.
His 2014 Presidential Pork: White House Influence over the Distribution of Federal Grants demonstrates that pork-barrel politics occurs beyond the halls of Congress. Presidents capitalize on their discretionary funding authority to target federal dollars to swing states in advance of presidential elections. His other work explores how agency staffing, expertise, and institutional structure facilitate or hinder presidential power and influence. This research explores the balance between political control and bureaucratic expertise in the delivery of public policy.
John’s work has been recognized for its quality and contribution by the Midwest Political Science Association and the American Political Science Association’s Presidency Research Group. His work has been supported by institutions including the National Science Foundation.
Prior to joining Brookings, John served as the program director and as a graduate fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. He holds a B.A. in political science and economics from the University of Connecticut and an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Vanderbilt University.
Director of Economic Studies, Cato Institute
Jeffrey Miron is director of economic studies at the Cato Institute and the director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Economics at Harvard University. His area of expertise is the economics of libertarianism, with particular emphasis on the economics of illegal drugs.
Miron has served on the faculty at the University of Michigan and as a visiting professor at the Sloan School of Management, M.I.T., and the department of economics at Harvard University. From 1992-1998, he was chairman of the department of economics at Boston University. He is the author of Drug War Crimes: The Consequences of Prohibition and The Economics of Seasonal Cycles, in addition to numerous op-eds and journal articles. He has been the recipient of an Olin Fellowship from the National Bureau of Economic Research, an Earhart Foundation Fellowship, and a Sloan Foundation Faculty Research Fellowship.
Miron received a BA, magna cum laude, from Swarthmore College in 1979 and a PhD in economics from MIT in 1984.
Alton C. and Cecile Cunningham Craig Professor of Law, The University of Alabama School of Law
Julie Andersen Hill is the Alton C. and Cecile Cunningham Craig Professor of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law where she teaches banking and commercial law. Her scholarly work focuses on the unwritten rules of banking regulation. She often examines how regulators respond to financial innovation. Before entering the legal academy, Professor Hill practiced law in the Washington, D.C. office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. As part of the litigation group, she represented large financial institutions in government investigations. She also clerked for Judge Wade Brorby on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. Professor Hill earned her undergraduate degree in economics summa cum laude from Southern Utah University and her J.D. summa cum laude from the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University.