In step with a statewide initiative, the city of Boston wants the profitable cannabis industry to benefit those who suffered from the drug’s many years of prohibition.

But as Boston City Councilors debate how to fairly regulate the new marijuana industry and support “economic empowerment applicants," local marijuana entrepreneurs say years of bureaucracy have begun to stifle their progress.

“Zero economic empowerment applicants have made it entirely through the licensing process thus far," Joe Gilmore, a community outreach director of at the Massachusetts Recreational Consumer Council, said at a city hearing on Tuesday.

“The economic empowerment applicants I know can’t even get an email response from the city,” Gilmore added.

Though it’s been more than two years since Massachusetts voters supported legalizing recreational marijuana, the city of Boston has no retail shops open. With two medical dispensaries open and pending host agreements with six retail marijuana stores and a manufacturing facility, Boston has been slow to regulate and license any recreational marijuana shops.

Members of the Boston City Council Committee on Government Operations took up the issue on Tuesday while discussing a progressive ordinance sponsored by Councilor Kim Janey, which would establish the “equitable regulation of the cannabis industry” within Boston.

The proposed ordinance, similar to guidelines set by the state’s Cannabis Control Commission, would lay out the criteria applicants must meet to be part of the “Boston Equity Program." In order to qualify, at least 51 percent of the applicant team must meet a handful of requirements, such as being disproportionately impacted by marijuana prohibition for the past 5-10 years, or having a conviction for the possession, sale or trafficking of marijuana, or being a person who is of black, African-American, Hispanic or Latino descent.

The proposed ordinance would ensure economic empowerment businesses outnumber other marijuana businesses in Boston on a 2-to-1 scale. It would also create a cannabis advisory board, made up of city officials, community business representatives, a person formerly incarcerated for marijuana charges, as well as public health and safety officials. Tax revenues would fund the advisory board, Janey said.

“This industry is here," Janey said during her opening remarks on Tuesday. "If the people in communities that have been locked up during prohibition of cannabis are now locked out from meaningful participation in this industry, then we will have missed this important opportunity to correct injustices of the past.”

Janey’s proposal received both support and criticism from the dozens of people who offered testimony during the hearing.

Tito Jackson, a former Boston City Councilor and current CEO of marijuana dispensary Verdant Medical Inc., called Janey’s proposed ordinance “the most progressive legislation" he’s seen in the country.

“The mantra here has to be, does Boston want to lead, or do we want to follow?” Jackson asked the councilors during his testimony. “I believe that it has been our calling as a city to step forward and lead since the city has actually been formed. So I think we need to step up. And I think cannabis is our chance, cannabis is our time.”

For Jackson, the spirit of the ordinance is viewed as a necessary step to righting the wrongs of the “War on Drugs" that impacted communities of color in Boston. He referenced an ACLU report that said in 2014, the arrest rate for marijuana sales in Massachusetts was 7.1 times higher for black people than white people.

Should Boston fail to create access in the new cannabis industry, Jackson said the city risks becoming “the East Coast Denver." Jackson said out of the more than 700 marijuana stores in Colorado, less than 1 percent are owned by black individuals.

As Boston officials mull over regulations, the road to recreational licensure remains difficult in the city, according to those at the hearing on Tuesday.

Boston resident Taba Moses, an economic empowerment applicant for business Green Soul Organics LLC, said there are real “stumbling blocks” unaddressed by both state and city regulators, while voicing support for the intention of the ordinance.

“The issue for economic access for people of color is just as important today as the right to access public accommodations were for people of color back in the ’60s,” Moses said at the hearing.

Moses and his team hope to be the first “seed-to-sale” black-owned company on the east coast. He said Green Soul Organics already had a host agreement for cultivation in Fitchburg, and secured two sites in Boston: one in the South End, on Columbus Avenue, and one in the outskirts of the Fenway neighborhood.

But like others who provided testimony, Moses pointed out that the steps and costs to secure property, multiple attorneys, accountants, bank accounts and loans in order to build a successful marijuana business -- all before even receiving a license from the city -- are roadblocks to potential economic empowerment applicants competing with larger, well-funded companies who want to come in and capitalize on the new marijuana market.

Many at the hearing also flagged an issue with the “buffer zone,” a city regulation that says no two marijuana shops can be within a half-mile of each other in Boston.

Marijuana entrepreneurs criticized the measure, which was initially implemented as a way to prevent overcrowding of marijuana shops, as hindering and unfair. Some, like John Napoli who owns The Boston Gardener in Dudley Square, proposed Boston follow a model implemented by Cambridge, which allows economic empowerment and social equity applicants to locate within the buffer zone.

“We don’t have these buffer zones for strip clubs, for Walgreens, for liquor stores. Why in the world do we have them for these businesses?” Napoli asked, after calling the zones “hypocritical" and “counterproductive.”

Boston Chief of Civic Engagement Jerome Smith said any change to the buffer zones will need public input, because there are some residents who view the zone as a “protection." Smith and many city councilors said they have attended public meetings in which residents are pushing back against proposals for marijuana shops and dispensaries in their neighborhoods, despite the fact that 62 percent of the city voted to support legalization.

As Boston continues to wrestle with regulations, the New England Treatment Access location will open in Brookline on Saturday. The company anticipates long lines of customers traveling from Boston and other neighboring communities.