D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson has called for a vote next Tuesday on emergency legislation that would allow the city to close down virtually any business that gives gifts of marijuana starting in mid-May, while at the same time eliminating the need for a doctor’s recommendation for anyone seeking marijuana from the city’s medical dispensaries.

The bill revives a fight Mendelson unsuccessfully waged late last year, one that seeks to buttress the medical marijuana program while taking aim at the growing yet legally contested industry of stores and services that sell products ranging from art to motivational speeches and offers complementary “gifts” of marijuana.

Owners of medical marijuana dispensaries — which are legal, regulated, and taxed — have complained since last summer that they have lost customers and business to the gifting stores, which operate in a gray area of the law. Possessing, using, and growing small amounts of marijuana has been legal in D.C. since 2015, as has been giving it away. Creative entrepreneurs have used that gifting provision liberally, so much so that critics like Mendelson and some owners of medical dispensaries complain they are operating as shadow sellers of marijuana for recreational use. And those gifting businesses manage to avoid most of the regulations imposed on the medical side.

The gifter businesses, which call themselves “I-71 shops” after the 2014 voter initiative that legalized gifting of marijuana, counter that what they are doing is not only perfectly legal, but has also created a diverse homegrown industry of vendors that could serve as the foundation of a proper recreational market should D.C. ever be allowed to legalize marijuana sales. (Mendelson has introduced a bill that would legalize recreational sales, but Congress is still standing in the way of that.)

Mendelson’s bill, though, would largely snuff out the gifters by clarifying that “no person operating an unregistered establishment where retail goods or services are sold or available for purchase shall offer a patron marijuana or marijuana products as part of that retail or service transaction.” It would also make it illegal for any store outside of the medical program to possess marijuana or marijuana products, or to buy marijuana for anyone but a registered cultivator in D.C. (The ones that exist serve the medical program.)

Starting May 16, the bill would allow D.C. agencies to close any unregistered establishment — any of the I-71 stores — for 96 hours and impose a fine on the vendor of up to $30,000 and on the landlord of up to the same amount.

“Several dozen illegal cannabis businesses are currently operating in the District. A review of over three dozen of the most prominent illegal cannabis businesses reveals that over two-thirds are owned by non-District residents. These businesses sell untraced, untested cannabis that is mostly cultivated outside of the District, are often located in areas where legal facilities are not allowed, such as being within 300 feet of schools and recreation facilities, due to concerns of youth exposure to cannabis and cannabis products, and do not pay the fees and taxes licensed facilities must pay, putting licensed cannabis businesses at a competitive disadvantage,” says a resolution from Mendelson’s office arguing for the need for immediate action.

The resolution also argues that it is focused on civil penalties instead of ramping up police enforcement, saying the latter is “ineffective and comes with a host of collateral consequences.”

At the same time, the legislation would loosen restrictions for medical marijuana, allowing anyone over the age of 21 to “self-certify” that they need marijuana for medical purposes, thus avoiding the usual requirement that they get a recommendation from a doctor. Last month D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser signed a bill passed by the council that lets residents over the age of 65 self-certify; 376 have since done so.

The bill Bowser signed will also lift sales taxes on medical marijuana for a week in April as a means to boost sales, another step the council has taken to sustain medical marijuana sellers and cultivators.

The gifters aren’t likely to sit this fight out; they have recently gotten more openly engaged in the battle for legal sales, and say they will urge lawmakers to reject Mendelson’s bill on Tuesday. (As emergency legislation, it will take nine of the council’s 13 votes to pass.)

“It’s frustration and outrage,” says Moira Cyphers, a lobbyist for the Generational Equity Movement, which represents five gifting stores. “I don’t think the chairman’s hands are maybe as tied as he thinks if he sort of opens up his mind. Why crack down, why limit? Why not say we’re going to look at the ways to promote small businesses that are already here and local cultivators who are already here?”

Cyphers recognizes that the city’s hands remain tied in another way–by the congressional prohibition on legalizing sales–but she adds that Mendelson could think creatively about moving the gifters into the medical program. “Blow the doors off the medical program and let’s figure out a path then for I-71 [stores] to become part of this larger medical 21+ self-certification program,” she says.