The Obama administration will soon announce regulations to make it easier for banks to do business with legal marijuana sellers, Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday. 
 
 "You don’t want just huge amounts of cash in these places. They want to be able to use the banking system," Holder said during an appearance at the University of Virginia's Miller Center. "There’s a public safety component to this. Huge amounts of cash—substantial amounts of cash just kind of lying around with no place for it to be appropriately deposited is something that would worry me, just from a law enforcement perspective." 
 
 While Holder spoke twice of new "regulations" that were being prepared, a Justice Department spokesman said later that the attorney general was referring to legal "guidance" for prosecutors and federal law enforcement. Such a legal memo wouldn't be enforceable in court and would amount to less than the kind of clear safe harbor many banks say they would want before accepting money from pot businesses. 
 
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 The federal banking accommodation, being worked out jointly by the Justice and the Treasury departments, comes in the wake of decisions by voters in Colorado and Washington state to legalize the sale and possession of pot. The moves have created legal tensions, since marijuana remains illegal under federal law. One particular problem has been the refusal of banks to deal with pot-related businesses out of fears they will be accused of violating money laundering laws. 
 
 "We’re in the process now of working with our colleagues at the Treasury Department to come up with regulations that will deal with this issue," Holder said. He added that the new rules were likely to emerge "very soon" and were not intended to amount to a blessing of marijuana by the federal government. "It is an attempt to deal with a reality that exists in these states," he said. 
 
 (WATCH: Eric Holder on Bob Gates' book) 
 
 Holder did not specify whether the rules would apply only in the states which have broadly legalized marijuana, or also to states which have legalized it for medicinal use. 
 
 In August, the attorney general announced the Obama Administration would not seek to overturn the Colorado and Washington state measures. He said federal drug agents would continue to leave most drug law enforcement to local authorities and would focus on large drug operations, setting priorities that appeared to make it unlikely the feds would engage in aggressive enforcement in the states which have legalized pot. 
 
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 UPDATE (Thursday, 9:30 P.M.): This post has been updated with a clarification from the Justice Department. 
 
 Read more about: Eric Holder, Treasury Department, Banking, Marijuana, Washington, Colorado, Money Laundering, Pot, Drug Legalization ||||| Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Thursday that lawful marijuana businesses should have access to the American banking system and that the government would soon offer rules to help them gain it. The rules are not expected to give banks a green light to accept deposits and provide other services, but would tell prosecutors not to prioritize cases involving legal marijuana businesses that use banks. 
 
 “You don’t want just huge amounts of cash in these places. They want to be able to use the banking system,” Mr. Holder said at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia. “There’s a public safety component to this. Huge amounts of cash, substantial amounts of cash just kind of lying around with no place for it to be appropriately deposited, is something that would worry me, just from a law enforcement perspective.” 
 
 For marijuana growers and retailers in the 20 states that have legalized the drug for recreational or medical use, money and banking are perhaps the most vexing challenges of doing business. Piles of cash accumulate in back rooms and safes, making the businesses, their employees and their customers a target for robberies. Businesses often have no access to business loans or regular lines of credit. Many say they struggle to even keep a checking account open to pay their employees or electricity bills. 
 
 “It’s a security risk not just for the industry but all these other folks,” said Michael Elliott, the executive director of the Medical Marijuana Industry Group, who added that he was encouraged by Mr. Holder’s comments. 
 
 Most banks remain leery of accepting deposits from a marijuana dispensary, for fear that they could lose their charter, attract unwanted attention from regulators or even risk prosecution for money laundering. And it was unclear on Thursday what exactly the new federal guidelines would say, and whether they would apply to states that allow medical marijuana, or just to Colorado and Washington, where the drug is legal in small amounts for anyone 21 or older. 
 
 For the banking industry, the details of the guidelines will be crucial for deciding whether banks feel comfortable taking deposits, giving loans or issuing credit cards to legal marijuana businesses. Without specific guidelines, many banks might continue to refuse transactions with legal marijuana businesses. 
 
 Richard Riese, senior vice president for regulatory compliance at the American Bankers Association, said this month that banks would want to know, for instance, that they were not “aiding and abetting” a criminal enterprise if they provided such services. 
 
 “Banks will need a lot of detail from regulators to get the satisfaction and comfort they are looking for,” he said. 
 
 For months, elected officials and law enforcement agencies in states that have legalized marijuana have urged federal officials to offer guidelines that would clarify the government’s stance on banking and marijuana businesses. 
 
 While marijuana is illegal in most states and is prohibited under federal law, the Obama administration said last summer that it would allow Colorado and Washington State to move ahead with legalizing the drug for recreational use. 
 
 In a recent interview with The New Yorker, President Obama said that despite his misgivings about marijuana and the push for broader legalization of the drug, it was important that Colorado’s and Washington’s experiments go forward. 
 
 “It’s important for society not to have a situation in which a large portion of people have at one time or another broken the law and only a select few get punished,” he said. 
 
 Andy Williams, who runs Medicine Man, a dispensary in an industrial park in Denver, said dependable access to bank accounts and credit could revolutionize his business. 
 
 Like many other retailers, Mr. Williams is sometimes drowning in cash. He said he has hired an armored-car service to move his money, and tries to pay his bills in cash as much as possible to reduce the amount he has on hand. He continually jumps from one bank to another when financial institutions decide his account is not worth the risk. To try to keep the banks from catching on, he said, he even sprays his cash with Febreze to disguise the scent of marijuana. 
 
 “We’re always scared, if we have a bank account, about keeping it,” he said. “We go to great lengths to lower our profile.” ||||| Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a hard-liner against the push to legalize marijuana, has vowed to take a tougher stance since joining the administration of President Donald Trump last year. | Carolyn Kaster/AP Sessions announces end to policy that allowed legal pot to flourish DOJ leaders said the Obama-era policies made marijuana industry players too comfortable. 
 
 Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced on Thursday that he was rescinding an Obama-era policy that had paved the way for legalized marijuana to flourish in states across the country, prompting quick pushback from at least two Republican senators from states that allow its use. 
 
 In a long-awaited move, the Justice Department chief withdrew federal guidelines that effectively limited prosecutions of businesses and individuals who sold pot in a legal manner under state law, even though the drug remains illegal under federal law. 
 
 Story Continued Below 
 
 Sessions said future prosecutions would be up to individual U.S. attorneys. However, the announcement appeared intended to discourage marijuana-related business by being deliberately vague about future federal enforcement efforts. 
 
 The new approach will probably increase confusion about the legal risk of marijuana-related activity in states that have passed legislation allowing people to grow, buy or use pot. 
 
 "Given the Department's well-established general principles, previous nationwide guidance specific to marijuana enforcement is unnecessary and is rescinded, effective immediately," Sessions said in a one-page memo sent to federal prosecutors nationwide. 
 
 In a statement, the attorney general said the department's earlier guidance "undermines the rule of law" by second-guessing the national drug laws Congress has passed. 
 
 However, Justice Department officials who briefed reporters on the announcement declined to say whether the new policy was intended to increase federal prosecutions for marijuana-related crimes. 
 
 “I can’t sit here and say whether it will or will not lead to more marijuana prosecutions,” said a senior DOJ official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We believe U.S. attorneys’ offices should be opened up to bring all of the cases that they believe are necessary to be brought.” 
 
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 Justice Department leaders said the Obama-era policies, most of them issued by Deputy Attorney General Jim Cole, made marijuana industry players too comfortable in a business that has always been illegal under federal law. 
 
 “The Cole memo as interpreted created a safe harbor for the marijuana industry to operate in these states. There is a belief that that is inconsistent with what federal law says,” the official said. "The Cole memo was not consistent with federal law. [Sessions] believes that it's important that the Department of Justice be enforcing the laws that were enacted by Congress." 
 
 When states stepped up legalization efforts under the Obama administration, Justice Department officials considered the possibility of filing litigation aiming to head off such moves, but ultimately chose not to do so and to instead accommodate the state laws. 
 
 Asked whether such suits against states were now again a possibility, the current DOJ official said: “Further steps are still under consideration." 
 
 The Trump administration's policy shift may not be sufficiently dramatic to drive existing players out of the pot business or to discourage new entrants who are intent on taking advantage of opportunities being created by increasingly liberalized state laws. 
 
 The approach that Sessions announced Thursday, however, could complicate the marijuana business by making it more difficult for pot sellers to access banking services. One of the memos the attorney general withdrew was a 2014 Justice Department policy that seemed to assure banks that they could do business with marijuana sellers complying with state laws. 
 
 While that memo is now canceled, parallel Obama-era guidance from the Treasury Department remains on the books. A spokesman for Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Center did not directly respond to an inquiry about whether that agency is reviewing its policies to bring them into line with the Justice Department changes. 
 
 "FinCEN works closely with law enforcement and the financial sector to combat illicit finance and provide relevant information that allows law enforcement to pursue their priorities. We will continue to work with DOJ and other stakeholders on this issue," the spokesman said. 
 
 Justice Department officials also faced questions about whether new prosecutions over marijuana would divert resources from combating the opioid addiction epidemic that President Donald Trump has declared a national priority. Officials said U.S. attorneys in each district would be able to assess the severity of various problems in their district and react accordingly. 
 
 "This is not saying that opioid cases should not be brought," a DOJ official said. "Districts that have opioid issues, that is what should be weighed into these determinations." 
 
 California, which has allowed medical marijuana use for two decades, opened its dispensaries to the general public without prescriptions on Jan. 1. Justice Department officials said they were unaware of any link between the timing of Sessions’ announcement and the state’s recent shift. 
 
 “This is something that has been under consideration at the department for a long time,” the official told reporters. “I know of nothing that ties it directly to that.” 
 
 Sessions, a hard-liner against the push to legalize marijuana, has vowed to take a tougher stance since joining the Trump administration last year. In February, Sessions said that while states "can pass the laws they choose," he maintained that it remained "a violation of federal law to distribute marijuana throughout any place in the United States." 
 
 But the gesture is already facing opposition from political leaders in states where marijuana has been decriminalized or legalized. 
 
 Colorado’s U.S. attorney, Bob Troyer, issued a statement Thursday saying his office wouldn’t change its approach to prosecuting marijuana crimes, despite the Justice Department's announcement. 
 
 Sens. Cory Gardner of Colorado, where recreational marijuana was approved by voters in 2012, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, where pot has been decriminalized since 2003 and legalized recreationally since 2014, denounced the plan on Thursday after it was first reported by The Associated Press. 
 
 "This reported action directly contradicts what Attorney General Sessions told me prior to his confirmation," Gardner said on Twitter. "With no prior notice to Congress, the Justice Department has trampled on the will of the voters in CO and other states. I am prepared to take all steps necessary, including holding DOJ nominees, until the Attorney General lives up to the commitment he made to me prior to his confirmation." 
 
 Gardner cited comments from Trump during a July 2016 interview that the issue should be "left up to the states" in criticizing the move. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at Thursday's press briefing that the president supported the new guidance and that “enforcing federal law ... would be his top priority." 
 
 "Over the past year I repeatedly discouraged Attorney General Sessions from taking this action and asked that he work with the states and Congress if he feels changes are necessary," Murkowski wrote in a statement. "Today's announcement is disruptive to state regulatory regimes and regrettable." 
 
 Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), co-chairman of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, called the plan "outrageous," saying: "Going against the majority of Americans — including a majority of Republican voters — who want the federal government to stay out of the way is perhaps one of the stupidest decisions the Attorney General has made." 
 
 However, Kevin Sabet, president of an organization opposed to marijuana legalization, praised the decision to rescind the Obama-era guidance. Sabet said the announcement would not put the target on individual marijuana users but rather undercut monetary support for the growing marijuana sales industry. 
 
 “We hope that this is the beginning of the end of this new Big Tobacco industry,” said Sabet, leader of Smart Approaches to Marijuana. 
 
 It was not immediately clear how the Justice Department's new approach would be affected by a budget rider that prohibits the use of federal money to interfere with state-authorized medical marijuana use. 
 
 A 2016 ruling from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals interpreted that amendment to bar federal prosecutors in Western states from proceeding with criminal cases against medical marijuana sellers complying with state law. 
 
 A Justice Department official said prosecutors were abiding by that ruling in the nine 9th Circuit states but reserved their rights to bring such cases in other states not covered by the decision. 
 
 Justice Department officials said one place federal prosecutors might focus their attention is on states like Nebraska, where officials complain of an uptick in pot sales, distribution and violence that they attributed to a spillover from legal marijuana businesses in neighboring Colorado. 
 
 "Diversion of marijuana out of any of the states that have legalized marijuana under state law is obviously a concern," a Justice official said.
– The Obama administration will soon take the radical step of allowing legal pot businesses to actually put their money in banks—sort of. At an event yesterday, Eric Holder said he was working with the Treasury Department on new regulations and would unveil them "very soon," Politico reports. "There's a public safety component to this," the attorney general explained. "Substantial amounts of cash just kind of lying around ... is something that would worry me, just from a law enforcement perspective." But a Justice Department spokesperson later said that it would merely issue legal "guidance" telling prosecutors not to prioritize such cases. That might not be enough for banks; the American Bankers Association tell the New York Times that they'll want "a lot of detail from regulators"—and assurances they won't be prosecuted—before they'll feel comfortable taking the money. States with legalized marijuana have been clamoring for such a change, as have the companies themselves, who say they're overburdened with cash. But the Times notes it's unclear whether what the DOJ is preparing would extend to all states that have OKed medical marijuana, or just Colorado and Washington. It would be a rare pro-pot step from what's been a virulently anti-pot administration, and comes on the heels of President Obama's recent much-discussed comments on it.