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“If it’s not money laundering, then that risk of prosecution goes away for investment banks, trading houses, the stock markets, all of those things,” Avergun said. “There are quite a few financial institutions that are close to the fence but not quite over the fence on their comfort in doing these transactions, and for those, this will push them over.”

This is particularly true for U.S. stock exchanges, which currently won’t list so-called “plant-touching” companies with U.S. operations because the drug remains illegal at the federal level.

“That’s exactly who’s going to look at Section 3 and say, ‘Wow, that really protects us, no one’s going to say that we’re committing money laundering,” she said.

That doesn’t bode well for Canadian bourses like the Canadian Securities Exchange, as well as some investment banks that have turned cannabis into a big business after the country legalized pot almost a year ago. Many American pot companies have expressed interest in moving to the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq when they can, and will likely prefer to work with the big U.S. banks as well.