Cannabis workers and investors will be treated as drug traffickers
You don’t need to smoke weed to get banned from the US.
If you’re planning to enter Canada’s pot industry – whether as an investor or worker – then you’ll likely be barred from setting foot on American soil, a US border official said.
“We don’t recognize [the cannabis industry] as a legal business,” Todd Owen, executive assistant commissioner at the US Customs and Border Protection agency, told Politico.
While Canada is set to legalise the use of recreational marijuana on Oct. 17, the US agency will continue to list cannabis as a banned substance. Investors and workers will thus be considered drug traffickers.
The US Immigration and Nationality Act rejects foreign nationals who have been “an illicit trafficker in any controlled substance” or assisted or benefitted financially from trafficking.
The agency won’t be spending time interrogating every Canadian about marijuana use, the report said. However, since border officials typically ask visitors about their livelihood, there is a chance cannabis workers and investors could be denied entry.
“If you work for the industry, that is grounds for inadmissibility,” Owen said. Travellers who provide border officials with false information face a lifetime ban.
In 2017, Canadians consumed approximately $6bn worth of marijuana, according to Statistics Canada. The industry is expected to have a retail value of $6.8bn by 2020, generating 150,000 new jobs, from growers to bud trimmers.
