💸 The Tape

The American Bankers Association just sent Congress a letter urging passage of the SAFE Banking Act. If that sentence gives you déjà vu, you're not imagining it. The banking industry's largest trade group has been asking for this legislation for the better part of a decade — and Congress has found a new way to fail every single time.

But this letter is different in one crucial respect: the landscape around it has changed completely. And for the first time in the bill's tortured history, the ABA's argument isn't about a hypothetical future. It's about a federal reality that already exists.

What the ABA Is Asking For

The letter — addressed to House Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, along with the leadership of the Senate Banking and House Financial Services committees — urges "prompt consideration" and "timely passage" of the SAFE Banking Act, which bipartisan lawmakers refiled last month.

The core argument is the one the ABA has made for years: although nearly every U.S. state has legalized marijuana in some form, the uncertain legal landscape forces state-licensed businesses to operate largely in cash, outside the regulated banking system. Those proceeds don't stay confined to dispensaries — they flow to accountants, landlords, skilled trades, and law firms, spreading the compliance uncertainty across the broader economy.

"The SAFE Banking Act would remove barriers to banking these funds, materially reducing the amount of cash moving through state-licensed cannabis businesses and service providers," the letter states. "That, in turn, would reduce the risk that these businesses are targeted by bad actors, thereby improving public safety in the communities where they operate."

But the new letter adds an argument that didn't exist in previous iterations: federal rescheduling itself. The ABA explicitly cites the rescheduling of medical marijuana and evolving hemp definitions as developments that "underscore the need for Congress to act," warning that the volume of state-licensed proceeds "is likely to increase substantially, exacerbating potential public safety and illicit finance risks" if those funds remain outside the regulated system.

In other words: the federal government has now blessed medical cannabis as Schedule III medicine, the DEA is registering operators, and Trulieve is trading on the NYSE — but the cash from those federally registered businesses still can't reliably find a bank account. The absurdity has become impossible to defend.

A Decade of Dysfunction

The SAFE Banking Act's legislative history is one of the most maddening sagas in modern congressional politics — a bill with overwhelming bipartisan support, industry backing, law enforcement endorsements, and banking sector demand that has repeatedly died from nothing more than institutional inertia and political gamesmanship.

The House has passed versions of the SAFE Banking Act seven times — as a standalone bill, as an amendment to defense authorization packages, tucked into COVID relief legislation, attached to manufacturing bills. Seven times. Each time, the legislation went to the Senate and disappeared.

The closest brush with passage came in 2023, when the rebranded SAFER Banking Act cleared the Senate Banking Committee on a bipartisan 14-9 vote — the first time cannabis banking legislation had ever advanced through a Senate panel. Then-Majority Leader Schumer pledged to bring it to the floor "with all due speed." It never received a vote. The bill died at the end of the 118th Congress, victim to disputes over criminal justice amendments, Section 10 regulatory language that Democrats feared would undermine banking oversight beyond cannabis, and the perpetual congressional habit of letting the perfect strangle the good.

The drama over the years has bordered on farce. Republicans blocked it when Democrats attached social equity provisions. Democrats hesitated when they worried passing banking reform alone would sap momentum for comprehensive legalization. Senate leadership from both parties treated it as a bargaining chip for larger packages that never materialized. And through it all, cannabis businesses kept stacking cash in vaults, armored car companies kept charging premium rates, and dispensary employees kept getting robbed.

The ABA's Repeat Performances

This isn't the ABA's first letter — it's at least the third major push the organization has made. The ABA formally endorsed cannabis banking legislation in 2019, when it joined all 50 state bankers associations in writing to the Senate Banking Committee urging action after the House's first standalone passage of SAFE. The group returned in 2023 with another leadership letter backing the SAFER Banking Act ahead of the committee markup, testifying that banks were caught between state legality and federal prohibition with no safe harbor.

Both times, the ABA's argument was fundamentally the same: banks don't want to make cannabis policy — they want legal clarity to serve legal businesses. Both times, Congress acknowledged the logic, praised the bipartisanship, and did nothing.

The difference now is that the ABA's third letter arrives in a world where the federal government itself has moved. Medical cannabis is Schedule III. The DEA is conducting on-site inspections at dispensaries. Treasury and IRS guidance on 280E is forthcoming. Senate Banking Chairman Tim Scott (R-SC) — who opposed the bill in 2023 — has publicly called the banking situation a "quandary" that needs solving, noting that "you can't have these cash rooms where you have hundreds of thousands of dollars sitting in a location."

When the Republican chairman of the Senate Banking Committee starts making the public safety argument for cannabis banking, the political calculus has shifted.

The Path Forward

The realistic route to passage runs through three variables. First, committee action: Scott controls the Senate Banking agenda, and his evolving posture suggests a markup is plausible in this Congress — particularly if the DEA's broader rescheduling process concludes favorably and provides additional political cover. Second, the vehicle: standalone floor time remains scarce, so SAFE's best odds may once again involve attachment to must-pass legislation — appropriations, NDAA, or a year-end package — where individual senators can't easily hold it hostage. Third, the rescheduling outcome: if the ALJ process results in all marijuana moving to Schedule III, the remaining rationale for banking hesitancy collapses almost entirely, and SAFE Banking becomes less a cannabis bill than a financial-system housekeeping measure.

The wildcard is whether rescheduling paradoxically reduces urgency. Some in Congress may argue that Schedule III solves the banking problem on its own. It doesn't — rescheduling eases tax treatment and federal legitimacy but does not provide the explicit safe harbor protections that banks' compliance departments require. The ABA's letter exists precisely to make that point before the misconception hardens.

The Bottom Line

Seven House passages. One committee approval. Three ABA letters. Zero laws. The SAFE Banking Act is simultaneously the most popular and most cursed piece of cannabis legislation in American history.

But the conditions in July 2026 are unlike anything the bill has faced before: a rescheduled medical market, NYSE-listed operators, a Republican Banking chairman conceding the problem, and the nation's largest banking lobby making its most urgent appeal yet. The businesses are federally registered. The stocks trade on the Big Board. The cash still can't find a bank.

At some point, Congress runs out of ways to avoid the obvious. The ABA is betting that point is now. History suggests skepticism. The moment suggests otherwise.

📈 Dog Walkers

$VREOF ( ▼ 2.01% ) Hires Market Maker

Vireo Growth is addressing one of the quieter problems that comes with rapid expansion: making sure its stock trades as actively as its dealmaking.

The company announced it has engaged Independent Trading Group (ITG) to provide market-making services on the CSE and other trading venues, with the objective of maintaining a reasonable market and enhancing liquidity in Vireo's subordinate voting shares. Services commence on or about July 7, with an initial one-month term that auto-renews unless terminated with ten days' notice.

The terms are clean: no performance factors, no shares or options as compensation, and ITG is fully unaffiliated with the company — a straightforward cash-fee arrangement designed purely to tighten spreads and improve trading depth.

The move makes sense in context. Vireo has spent the past year executing one of the most aggressive acquisition campaigns in cannabis — Schwazze, Eaze, Hawthorne, FLUENT, C21 Investments, Bridgewell, the PhytoNatural Pennsylvania entry, and more — issuing shares as consideration in nearly every deal. With an expanding shareholder base of former target-company investors and growing institutional attention, consistent liquidity becomes essential for price discovery and for maintaining the stock's utility as an acquisition currency.

Small announcement. Practical purpose. For a company built on M&A, a functioning market for its shares is infrastructure — and Vireo just invested in it.

$ATAI ( ▼ 4.43% ) Doses Last Patient

AtaiBeckley just hit a critical milestone in what's shaping up to be the busiest Phase 3 pipeline in psychedelic medicine — and the company is already telegraphing where it goes next.

The clinical-stage biotech announced that the last patient has been dosed in Elumina, its Phase 2b trial evaluating VLS-01 — a proprietary oral transmucosal film formulation of DMT — in adults with treatment-resistant depression. The multi-center, double-blind, placebo-controlled study randomized 156 patients, with topline data expected in Q4 2026.

The trial design is rigorous: patients receive two double-blind administrations two weeks apart, followed by a 12-week placebo-controlled follow-up, then re-randomization to a third dose at one of two strength levels. The primary endpoint measures MADRS change at Day 29, with durability assessments extending through week 14.

What makes VLS-01 commercially distinctive is the two-hour treatment session — dramatically shorter than psilocybin protocols requiring six to eight hours of clinical monitoring. For a chronic indication requiring repeat visits, that time efficiency could be decisive for both provider adoption and payer economics.

CEO Srinivas Rao used the milestone to articulate the broader strategy: subject to supportive Phase 2 results, AtaiBeckley intends to advance VLS-01 into major depressive disorder in Phase 3, with generalized anxiety disorder as a potential follow-on. Combined with BPL-003 — the company's intranasal mebufotenin candidate already in Phase 3 for TRD with Breakthrough Therapy Designation — the portfolio is positioned to span "the spectrum of mood and anxiety disorders."

The timing matters. With Definium's blockbuster Phase 3 LSD data, Compass Pathways targeting an NDA filing this year, and Helus Pharma's Q4 readout approaching, AtaiBeckley's Q4 data drop places it squarely in the wave of late-stage catalysts that will define the psychedelic sector's credibility by year-end.

Four companies. Four readouts. One transformed treatment landscape — if the data holds.

🗞️ The News

📺 Trade To Black

We Are Live From The ALJ On Cannabis Rescheduling | TTB Presented by Flowhub

• Live from Arlington: Gretchen Gailey reports directly from the ALJ hearing as SAM presents its testimony — providing a firsthand account of how the prohibitionist group is framing its case, the government's cross-examination strategy, and what the judge appears focused on ahead of the July 15 conclusion.

• Hearing Debrief: Michael Bronstein of ATACH breaks down the week's key takeaways, including the FDA's landmark under-oath acknowledgment of cannabis's accepted medical uses and government testimony comparing cannabis favorably to alcohol and opioids.

• DOJ Fires Back: The government's Friday brief dismantles the NDASA and MMJ standing arguments, dismissing their claimed injuries as "pocketbook interests" built on "generalized speculation" — and arguing the challengers "come nowhere near" the standard required for a stay.

• Two Tracks Converging: With the ALJ hearing building an evidentiary record and the D.C. Circuit weighing the stay motion simultaneously, the outcome of both proceedings — potentially within weeks of each other — will determine the trajectory of federal cannabis policy for years.