D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser is pushing forward with legislation to legalize cannabis in the District.

The Safe Cannabis Sales Act of 2021, introduced Friday, would legalize recreational marijuana sales in the District for people 21 and up — and also subject to a hefty 17% sales tax. It would also take steps to reverse the harms of previous cannabis-related law enforcement actions, particularly on low-income communities of color.

“Through this legislation, we can fulfill the will of D.C. voters, reduce barriers for entering the cannabis industry, and invest in programs that serve residents and neighborhoods hardest hit by the criminalization of marijuana,” Bowser said in a press release.

D.C. officials have long wanted to put in place a tax-and-regulate scheme for recreational marijuana. The voters showed their support at the ballot box, too, passing Initiative 71 in 2014, which allows adults in D.C. to grow, possess and gift weed — but not sell it. Since 2014, Congress has prevented D.C. from allowing the sale of marijuana by attaching a provision to D.C.’s appropriations bill that precludes the District from using its funds to legalize or regulate cannabis sales.

D.C. officials and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton continued the push for recreational cannabis sales in 2018, when control of the House of Representatives flipped to Democrats and Bowser again submitted a tax-and-regulation bill to the Council.

The 2021 measure takes steps to reckon with the toll the longtime criminalization of the drug has taken on communities of color in the District. The bill would expunge some marijuana-related offenses from people’s criminal records. It would also funnel sales tax revenue — as much as $1 million in fiscal year 2023 and $2 million in years after — into helping “social equity applicants and returning citizens” get start-ups off the ground. That’s a change from Bowser’s last marijuana legalization bill in 2019, which directed all sales tax revenue to affordable housing programs.

Her new bill also creates a new license category for microbusinesses (cultivators of fewer than 300 plants at a time) and third-party “social equity” delivery services, which would allow home delivery of marijuana by people who meet certain income and residency requirements, including having lived in wards 7 or 8 for the five preceding years. The bill would additionally enable returning citizens and residents with criminal backgrounds to work and own cannabis businesses.

More revenue from cannabis sales would go towards funding organizations in wards 7 and 8. That list includes women and minority-owned small businesses opening or expanding restaurants; small grocery stores; and public school afterschool programs in wards 5,7, and 8, which would receive as much as $3 million in 2023 and $6 million in 2024 and beyond.

Under the measure, D.C. would require cannabis vendors to have their products tested by an independent facility to track their potency and check them for contaminants. D.C. would also establish branding and advertising guidelines to “minimize exposing minors to cannabis,” per the press release.

Elsewhere in the D.C. region, Virginia is also inching closer to passing marijuana legalization. Maryland is debating its own bill, too, and the state already has medical marijuana dispensaries.

If Bowser’s cannabis bill does pass this year — and if Congress, now entirely in Democratic hands, doesn’t block D.C. from paying for it — sales of marijuana could start in Oct. 2022.