“We have to strike while the iron is hot,” Vincent B. Orange (D-At Large), the committee’s chairman, said Thursday. “From all I’ve heard, the Hill is not going to expend their political capital messing with our marijuana bills. So I think we shouldn’t piecemeal it. We should send it all up at once.”

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“All” of it would mean, Orange says, the transmittal to Congress of the initiative itself, the tax-and-regulate bill (the subject of an October hearing), and a third bill introduced by Orange that would prohibit employers for testing job applicants for marijuana before a job offer is extended.

Orange’s enthusiasm notwithstanding, it doesn’t appear that package will be headed to Capitol Hill intact. Other committees must mark up the two bills — including the Public Safety and Judiciary Committee, which is set to move another major piece of legislation next week, the permanent version of the bill permitting some residents to legally carry handguns in the city.

“We’re doing the gun bill,” said Wells, who leaves office Jan. 2. “I just don’t see how we could get this bill marked up and ready to go in time. They don’t lose a whole lot by waiting till the next session.”

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Wells’s skepticism was shared by Chairman Phil Mendelson (D), who said he had concerns about rushing through a marijuana-sales bill — among them, the relative pricing of legal marijuana and so-called “synthetic marijuana,” a product thought to be more dangerous which could end up being cheaper than “natural” weed.

“The council needs to look very carefully at what the economic factors are,” Mendelson said, also expressing concerns about the “political acceptability of a licensing and taxing scheme.”

Mendelson said he is also in no rush to send the initiative itself for congressional review. There is no sense, he said, in transmitting the bill before the new Congress gavels to order because the 30-legislative-day review period resets when a congressional term ends.