We fail English? That’s unpossible. (Photo by philliefan99)

What was supposed to be an official public hearing on two proposed marijuana-related bills started an hour late and was downgraded to a “roundtable” after a warning from D.C.’s attorney general.

Amid growing pressure from Congress surrounding D.C.’s in-limbo marijuana legalization initiative—which is currently being blocked by Congress via a rider in an omnibus spending bill—attorney general Karl Racine sent a letter to the D.C. Council late last week warning them that the planned hearing would “violate a spending prohibition,” the Post first reported.

This morning the Council was supposed to hold a joint public hearing with the Committees on Business, Consumer, and Regulatory Affairs, Finance and Revenue, and the Judiciary over two proposed bills—one to introduce a marijuana taxation and regulation system and another that would bar employers from requiring a marijuana test before granting employment to a candidate—but after Racine’s letter, it was downgraded to a “roundtable.”

According to Racine’s letter, holding such a hearing “would violate federal civil and criminal code provisions,” which could result in significant fines and possibly jail time for any lawmaker or staff member that helped organize the hearing.

Just before the hearing was to begin at 10 a.m., Council Chairman Phil Mendelson decided to push it back an hour and rebranded it as a roundtable for public witnesses to voice their support or concern with the two proposed laws.

While, a majority of the roundtable’s witnesses voiced their support for both bills—for reasons that varied from ideological belief that marijuana should be legalized to being a statement to Congress that we should have the right to pass our laws without interference—some weren’t supportive of loosening up the District’s pot laws.

William Jones, who was one of the main organizers of the anti-Initiative 71 campaign T.I.E. D.C. worried (delivered via a beat poem) that introducing a taxation and regulation system would make marijuana even more accessible to youths.

According to the bill proposed by Councilmember David Grosso (I-At Large), the sale and regulation of marijuana would be set up much like it is with alcohol, making it illegal for any person under the age of 21 to purchase it.

Though Grosso’s bill—like Initiative 71—is currently in limbo thanks to Congress, the Council is able to move forward on the “Prohibition of Pre-Employment Marijuana Testing Act of
2015.”