CFIG Cannabis Clips Week of Friday, September 19

Cannabis News of Note:

Cannabis Reports of Note:

Cannabis Wire (9/19): The latest FinCEN banking data is in (paywalled newsletter, text below and data linked here)

Shield Compliance: Cannabis Banking Survey Shows Licensed Operators Ready for Payments Innovation and Expanded Credit Access

CRB Monitor: Q2 2025 Cannabis Business Licensing Activity Review

Cannabis Wire (9/19): The U.S. Census Bureau updates its collection of state cannabis tax data(paywalled newsletter, text below and data linked here)

NCIA: Leveling the Playing Field: The Case for §280E Reform and Retroactive Relief

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Cannabis Wire: The latest FinCEN banking data is in (September 19, 2025)

FinCEN has finally updated its available data on cannabis banking, bringing it up to the end of December.

While this doesn’t yet reflect whether and how financial institutions are adjusting their approach to cannabis amid Trump 2.0, here are some of the highlights:

The number of Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) for Q4 2024 was the highest yet: 21,480.

To refresh, FinCEN released guidance a decade ago for financial institutions that wanted to work with cannabis businesses, and it required those institutions to file one of three types of SARs: “marijuana limited,” for cannabis entities believed to be in compliance with state law; “marijuana priority,” for those possibly in violation of the law; and “marijuana termination,” which means the bank ended the relationship for compliance purposes.

Of the Q4 SARs, 18,614 were “limited,” 1,546 were “priority,” and 2,235 were “termination.”

The number of “active filers” for Q4 was 816, which is slightly down from the peak of 831 in Q2.

Of those, 507 were banks, 182 were credit unions, and 127 were non-depository institutions.

As you can see when the data are visualized, while there have been some fluctuations in recent quarters, filings have mostly plateaued.

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Cannabis Wire: The U.S. Census Bureau updates its collection of state cannabis tax data (September 19, 2025)

The Census Bureau is out with its latest state cannabis tax data and it shows that, among all states with regulated sales, New York is seeing the most consistent tax revenue growth.

Unfortunately, the Bureau has stopped visualizing its data for the first time since it launched its cannabis-focused map in late 2021. However, it still released updated numbers as planned this month.

Here are the top five states in Q2 2025 (it’s worth noting that they’ve all seen declines):

California still earns by far more cannabis tax revenue than any other state: $155,548,000 (down from $246,163,000 in Q3 2021)

Washington state was not included this quarter, but they still come in second based on their Q1 number: $106,064,000 (down from $163,087,000 in Q2 2022)

Michigan is in third place: $74,251,000 (down from $80,994,000 in Q4 2024)

Illinois is close behind, also with declines: $71,406,000 (down from $72,805,000 in Q3 2024)
Colorado is in fifth, also with declines: $57,384,000 (down from $106,971,000 in Q3 2021)

Based on New York’s latest numbers, we expect the Big Apple to join the Bureau’s top five next quarter. In Q2, they brought in $55,631,000 – the state’s highest figure yet.

Two notes for context: first, the above only includes numbers from the Bureau from the time they started collecting this data, meaning the revenue peaks could have been higher prior to Q3 2021; second, declines might be due to changes in tax structure, or other regulatory changes, not necessarily declining sales, such as California’s elimination of its cultivation tax.