For Banks, Marijuana’s Reclassification Could Clear a Path to Lending

In May the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency began a process to reclassify cannabis from a Schedule I to a Schedule III drug. The public comment period on the proposal ended July 22 with nearly 43,000 comments, and now the agency must decide whether to officially downgrade the drug from a class that includes dangerously addictive narcotics like heroin to one with drugs that have beneficial medical uses and a low likelihood of causing dependency. 

The socioeconomic impac…