Senate Bill Would Shield Insurers That Cover Cannabis Businesses

State-legal cannabis companies can cultivate their product, sell it, and pay taxes on it, yet many still cannot buy the same basic insurance that protects any other storefront or warehouse. A bipartisan pair of U.S. senators wants to close that gap. Sens. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) have introduced the Clarifying Law Around Insurance of Marijuana (CLAIM) Act, a measure that would stop federal regulators from punishing insurance companies for covering marijuana businesses that operate legally under state law.

The bill would create what is known as a safe harbor. Federal agencies could not prohibit, penalize, or discourage an insurer from writing policies for a state-licensed cannabis business, and could not push a carrier to cancel or limit coverage simply because the customer is in the marijuana trade. It would also protect the insurers’ employees, agents, and brokers from federal liability for doing that work. Both senators sit on the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, which took up the bill after it was read twice and referred on July 21, 2026.

Why insurers keep their distance

Marijuana is legal in some form across most of the country (Cramer’s office counts 42 states), but it remains a federally controlled substance. That conflict is the root of the problem. Because cannabis sales are still a federal crime, an insurer that covers a dispensary, cultivator, or delivery service takes on federal exposure of its own, so many carriers avoid the sector or charge a premium for the limited coverage they will write.

The result is thin, costly protection. Most commercial cannabis coverage is written in the surplus-lines market that sits outside standard state regulation, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, and the gaps are widest for smaller operators and newer segments such as consumption lounges. Typical policies cap around $1 million per occurrence when some businesses need limits of $5 million or more, and roughly 70 percent of cannabis businesses still ran primarily on cash as of late 2025, the group reports — a reliance that drives up theft risk and makes underwriting harder.

Cramer, who cosponsored the first version of the insurance bill in 2019, put the case plainly in announcing the measure: “Much like marijuana businesses are barred from using bank accounts, they are also locked out of insurance markets.” He said the risk facing cannabis companies in states where the drug is legal is especially high, and that the bill would let insurers serve them without fear of federal prosecution.

A companion to the banking fight

This is the fourth Congress in a row in which lawmakers have filed the insurance bill, and its logic tracks the longer-running effort to get banks to serve the industry. Lawmakers have separately pressed ahead with cannabis banking legislation, an effort MyCannabis has covered as the banking lobby urged Congress to act. Insurers, like banks, say they need explicit federal cover before they will fully commit to the market.

Gallego, a first-term senator from Arizona, where adult-use sales are well established, framed the bill as a matter of parity, saying legitimate cannabis businesses “should have the same access to insurance coverage as any other business.” He called it a commonsense, bipartisan fix. The measure also directs the Government Accountability Office to report on the barriers that keep people out of the legal industry, including in licensing, and on the financial-services hurdles facing minority-owned and women-owned cannabis companies.

What to watch

The Banking Committee is where earlier versions of the bill stalled, and the insurance measure and its banking counterpart have gained support but still await a Senate vote. Whether this Congress moves differently may depend less on the insurance debate itself than on the broader federal reset already under way.

Marijuana is moving from Schedule I toward Schedule III under a federal rescheduling effort that regulators expect to be finalized in 2026, a process MyCannabis has tracked through the DEA’s rescheduling hearing. That shift would lift the tax rule that bars cannabis businesses from deducting ordinary expenses, but it would not legalize marijuana federally or automatically open banks and insurers to the industry. That is the gap the CLAIM Act, and the banking bill beside it, is written to fill.