A consultant was expected to submit a first draft of proposed adult-use marijuana rules to the state Office of Marijuana Policy April 11, putting Maine back on track to open its recreational market by year’s end, state officials say.

“We are working incredibly hard to get this thing rolled out,” said Erik Gundersen, director of the new Office of Marijuana Policy, on April 10. “There are people in my office that are working, no lie, seven days a week to make sure we can get this adult-use industry rolled out in 2019.”

The Colorado consulting firm Freedman & Koski was tapped in February to write rules governing how Maine will license and regulate its adult-use market. The regulations will codify the legislative rewrite of a 2016 legalization referendum and flesh out areas that lawmakers left to rulemaking.

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Most employers in New York City would no longer be able to force job applicants to take drug tests for marijuana use, under a bill overwhelmingly approved this week by the City Council.

If the drug-screening law is enacted, it would put New York in relatively uncharted territory. Several drug policy and employment experts said that they did not know of similar laws on the books, even in states that have legalized marijuana.

In Maine, where voters approved legal recreational marijuana use, the law prevents employers from discriminating against people who have used cannabis, but it does not specifically regulate drug testing.

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U.S. Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Cory Gardner (R-CO) have reintroduced the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act in the U.S. Senate as the House companion bill, HR 1595, gains momentum.

The bipartisan legislation, which has 20 cosponsors in the Senate, would protect banks and other financial institutions from federal prosecution when working with cannabis-related businesses that are operating in compliance with state laws. Federal banking regulators would be prohibited from sanctioning banks for working with state-compliant cannabis businesses or terminating their services, taking action on loans granted to those businesses or limiting a depository institution’s access to the Deposit Insurance Fund. The bill would also protect ancillary businesses that work with the cannabis industry from being charged with money laundering and other financial crimes. Further, the legislation requires the Financial Institution Council to develop guidance to help credit unions and banks understand how to legally serve cannabis businesses.

“Forcing legal businesses to operate in all-cash is dangerous for our communities,” Merkley said in a public statement. “It’s absurd that cannabis business owners in Oregon have to shuttle around gym bags full of cash to take care of their taxes or pay their employees. Operating in cash is an invitation to robbery, money laundering and organized crime. This is a public safety issue, and I hope that this will be the Congress when we build a bipartisan consensus to put this common-sense fix into law."

The House version of the bill was introduced by Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-CO) and a bipartisan group of 108 cosponsors. The legislation was approved by the House Financial Services Committee last month and currently has 165 cosponsors.

“Lack of access to financial services is creating public safety problems for the rapidly growing legal cannabis industry, as well as interfering with transparency and access to capital for small businesses,” said Aaron Smith, executive director of the National Cannabis Industry Association, in a public statement. “The Senate now has the opportunity to keep up the momentum that the SAFE Banking Act has in the House and address this important issue.”

Last week, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin called on Congress to provide a legislative fix for the banking issues facing the cannabis industry. “There is not a Treasury solution to this. There is not a regulator solution to this,” he said. “If this is something that Congress wants to look at on a bipartisan basis, I’d encourage you to do this. This is something where there is a conflict between federal and state law that we and the regulators have no way of dealing with."