So, as we have seen from the Colorado experiment, there is a legal grey area surrounding profits received from legal weed and traditional bank accounts. It is against federal law for a bank to receive deposits and keep accounts for individuals or businesses who knowingly derive their earnings from activities which are considered criminal under the authority that regulates the banking industry, which would mean that marijuana's status as a Schedule I controlled substance makes any activity involving marijuana to be criminal in nature.
Trump's ascendance to the presidency makes things less certain. While I am optimistic and somewhat confident that President Trump will keep true to his state's rights rhetoric and begin to take the simple step of personally seeing that marijuana is removed from the CSA; either by eliminating funding for marijuana-related arrests, trials, housing, clothing, feeding, etc.; or by executive action that may or may not stand. The problem here is that there is an entire industry of people who have careers simply because of marijuana's status as an illegal drug and the jailing, prosecuting, investigating, and providing room/board/food to the inmates sentences for weed crimes. This means that the powers that be have to weigh the benefits and negatives of each path, really in full speculation.
Unfortunately, political compassion for a group of red-blooded american policemen who enforce the draconian marijuana laws will almost always be higher than for what they could easily present as a bunch of stoners who want to use their drug without being hassled (ignoring the MILLIONS of medical patients that have already been helped or completely cured of their ailments using different constituent parts of the plant -- from THC to CBD to THCa and CBDa and including terpenes and other aromatics present in this amazingly unique plant) by the "man."
Using such rhetoric, those forces who are against legal weed will almost always win in the legislature. That is the problem we have been fighting against for decades. Unfortunately, again, such forces are very powerful and very effective. If Mr. Trump is to confront those within his own party who are staunchly against any type of legalization; he will have to do so in a manner where he presents it as he always has -- as a states' rights issue instead of an area that should be federalized.
That's the most important issue, at the abstract core of our argument. That marijuana legislation is not a federal issue! Period.
--W