, which represents more than 50 cannabis retail stores in Washington, is asking state and county level leaders for help after an uptick in armed robberies of pot shops. Three fatalities were connected to pot shop robberies in Western Washington last week alone.
“It’s really hard to run a business when you have the prospect of being robbed almost any time,” he added. “These robberies, they have been spiking very recently, of course, but they’re getting incredibly violent.” He says federal lawmakers have refused to take marijuana off the list of illegal drugs, so most banks and credit card companies won’t work with pot stores. Now, most are cash only, and Espino thinks allowing credit or debit transactions would alleviate a lot of the issues the industry is facing, including robberies.