D.C. lawmakers heard testimony from almost 100 people Friday on a bill that would legalize marijuana sales, taking in suggestions on everything from what shape a legal industry would take, how to spend expected tax revenue, what could happen to the city’s medical marijuana program, and how best to advance social equity and diversity.

The day-long hearing came against a back drop of continued uncertainty as to whether the bill will ever become law, as a congressional prohibition on D.C. legalizing or regulating sales remains in place — and it’s unclear if and when Democrats will be able to repeal it. “The challenge is that we would like to legalize it. Congress has prohibited it,” said Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, who introduced the bill earlier this year. “We can only have a hearing on this bill and be ready when Congress lifts the prohibition.”

Mendelson’s bill would broadly legalize, tax, and regulate the sale of recreational marijuana at dispensaries, much like more than a dozen states have already done. But it would also expunge marijuana-related arrests and convictions and create a Cannabis Equity and Opportunity Fund to help fund marijuana businesses run by residents who were arrested for drug offenses or live in areas with high levels of poverty. His proposal also sets aside business licenses for people previously convicted of marijuana-related offenses or who have lived in low-income neighborhoods, and steers a percentage of tax revenue from sales to homeless services, economic development, and other programs in low-income neighborhoods.

Proponents of legalization hailed the bill’s emphasis on ensuring that residents impacted by the war on drugs — Black residents in D.C. have historically accounted for almost 90% of marijuana-related arrests — could benefit from what is expected to be a lucrative new industry.

“Never should a person put in prison for marijuana be put in the back of the line,” said Eric Spencer, a member of the D.C. Caucus for Returning Citizens who spent 13 years in prison for a marijuana-related offense.

“It’s important we have some mechanism in place to right the wrongs,” said Salim Adolfo, an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner in Ward 8. “People have been incarcerated for this, but as the country shifts how it views marijuana, we have to have some type of reparations for those who have been convicted of this.”

Still, other speakers said more could be done to right the wrongs from the war on drugs. Doni Crawford, a policy analyst at the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, suggested that tax revenue be used to provide direct cash payments to people and families impacted by drug arrests. And Desley Brooks, a former lawmaker in Oakland, California, who worked on equity in legal marijuana there, said D.C. needs to help local entrepreneurs succeed in a new marijuana industry.

“The access to capital is critically important,” she said. “You can provide social equity on paper and it can mean nothing because people can’t move forward in reality.”

Advocates also said D.C. should avoid limiting the number of marijuana licenses available, allow people to smoke marijuana in public, and let home-growers sell marijuana directly to dispensers or manufacturers or at farmers’ markets.

“It’s the greatest wealth creator for the most people. It’s a viable home-based industry,” said Adam Eidinger, an activist who co-wrote Initiative 71, which legalized personal use, possession, and home cultivation of small amounts of marijuana in 2014. “We have to foster what’s being grown here.”

Others raised concerns. Will Jones, a D.C. firefighter who fought the passage of Initiative 71, and Adolfo said lawmakers have to ensure that marijuana vendors don’t all concentrate in low-income areas. Veronica Chapman, a D.C. resident, asked for steps to be taken to protect homeowners and tenants from the smell of marijuana from adjacent properties.

But a significant portion of the conversation revolved addressing the large number of stores and services that currently give gifts of marijuana to customers who buy products like art, food, or stickers. While Initiative 71 allows individuals to give away small gifts of marijuana, city officials say the growing number of “gifting” stores and services are taking that too far — and hurting the established medical marijuana sellers in the process.

“The illegal businesses have pretty much shut down our legally licensed businesses,” said Yvette Alexander, a former Ward 7 councilmember and current lobbyist who has worked with the city’s medical marijuana industry.

Medical dispensers say they have lost customers to the gifting stores, and asked lawmakers to close down or fine the gifting stores and services until a legal market can be created. “I don’t see how there is a way to have a successful [legal] program… if you don’t first cause operators to close their doors and apply for licenses and adhere to the regulations,” said Corey Barnette, owner of the Kinfolk medical dispensary and District Growers cultivation center.

But operators and employees of those stores and services said they represent a homegrown legal industry in waiting, and one that is diverse as lawmakers have said they want the eventual legal market to be.

“Gifting shops, many of which are Black-owned, are where the majority of the city actually chooses to go. So forcing them out, rather than creating pathways for them, blatantly bulldozes a path for wealthy corporations or groups, few of whom are Black and local,” said Isang Udokwere, a D.C. resident who works with one of the gifting shops. “And we’ve seen this before all across the country: Black people locked up, shut down, and priced out of a market, an industry that they have been keeping alive for years.”

But Mendelson said he was limited in what he could do, largely because of the existing congressional prohibition that has stopped the city from legalizing sales. (A recent attempt to ramp up civil enforcement on the shops fell short earlier this month.)

“I’m hard pressed how we can do anything to regulate, control, direct, or protect those businesses,” he said. “We cannot treat them as legal because we’re not allowed to. We can try to ignore their business, but there’s been plenty of businesses that say their business is being hurt by this black market.”

Advocates for the shops and services have asked for “amnesty” for the time being, and eventual access to the legal market if and when it is created. Some owners in the medical marijuana industry say they are open to the operators eventually being made legal, but have also asked lawmakers to do more the protect medical dispensers in the meantime.

They have also recommended that D.C. do away with the sales tax charged on medical marijuana, allow non-D.C. residents to purchase marijuana at the dispensaries, and let patients self-certify — instead of having to get a recommendation from a doctor. A separate bill  introduced by Mayor Muriel Bowser would increase the number of medical dispensaries and remove other existing regulatory hurdles.

But for the time being, Mendelson said he is short on good options on how to proceed when it comes to legal recreational sales.

“I want to move as quickly as possible once the rider is lifted,” he said. “I want to move into the space of legalizing and regulating the businesses. If the rider is not lifted, we still have this quandary of the medical side being legal and recreational side being illicit. Much of this hearing points to how problematic the congressional rider is. That rider has created a public safety problem, maybe even a public health problem.”