According to a Financial Post article, US Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) permanently barred a Vancouver man with ties to the marijuana industry from entering the United States on November 14, 2018. The individual, who invests in a Canadian cannabis business, was traveling from Vancouver to Las Vegas to attend a cannabis convention and tour a marijuana facility. According to the article, when CBP learned that the individual “was going down to tour the marijuana facility and that he was an investor in marijuana, they gave him a lifetime ban.”
Under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(2)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, an individual is inadmissible to the United States if they are, or have been, “an illicit trafficker in any controlled substance…or is or has been a knowing aider, abettor, assister, conspirator, or colluder with others in the illicit trafficking in any such controlled or listed substance or chemical, or endeavored to do so.” While investors in the Canadian marijuana industry are generally admissible to the United States according to a CBP statement revised in October 2018, an individual may be determined to be inadmissible if they are traveling to the United States for reasons related to the marijuana industry. The Government of Canada’s website reiterates CBP’s inadmissibility warning.
The media has reported news of at least one other cannabis investor receiving the same bar earlier in 2018.