in terms of banks being able to accommodate the marijuana businesses. >> reporter: here's why -- first, recreational pot is legal in colorado and washington. medical marijuana in 20 states. and washington, d.c. but under federal law, marijuana's no different than hard-core illegal drugs like heroin and ecstasy. second, those new rules from the obama administration say any bank doing business with a marijuana dispensary must prove the pot never makes it into the hands of children, is never trafficked to another state. is not smoked on federal property, and has absolutely no ties to the drug cartels, among other things. >> while we don't really care to be doing the government's work for them, the bottom line is, we can't comply with that. there are simply -- there's simply no way that a bank can assert that marijuana isn't going to be used in certain fashion. >> reporter: powerful tool of capitalism unavailable to the legal pot industry, until the federal law changes.