Welcome to dispensary compliance updates by Green Bits. This week’s regulatory compliance updates are from April 23rd to April 29th. 

In federal news, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released a statement that clarified that the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill rendered the importation of hemp seeds legal. The USDA held that the DEA “no longer has authority to require hemp seed permits for import purposes.”

Additionally, the USDA announced last Wednesday that hemp cultivators can officially apply for intellectual property protection for seed-propagated hemp, making the newly legal crop part of an existing program. This will allow farmers to prohibit others from marketing their variety of the plant.

In payments news, PayPal Inc.’s Q1 2019 lobbying report, the company added the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act of 2019 to its list of lobbying efforts in Congress. The lobbying effort supports allowing cannabis businesses to have access to banking services and signals a change in the way the tech giant treats businesses in the cannabis industry.

For more information, please listen to the entire episode and visit greenbits.com/blog.