DEA's big marijuana shift could be a lifeline for California's troubled pot industry

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LATimes

If the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration reclassified marijuana as a less dangerous drug, it wouldn’t eliminate the conflicts between the feds and states such as California that have legalized many uses of the substance.

But it would bring one significant shift that could give California’s licensed pot companies a badly needed boost: a lighter tax burden.

But if marijuana is reclassified as a Schedule III drug, “players in that industry for the first time will be able to take standard tax deductions that other businesses take,” said Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, also known as NORML, which advocates for cannabis consumer.

"The payments industry only processes legal products, and reclassification does not make cannabis legal,” said Scott Talbot, executive vice president of the Electronic Transactions Assn. “Reclassification moves the needle but doesn’t cross the goal line to making cannabis legal and thus acceptable to banks and the credit and debit card industry.”

Little by little