D.C. councilman David Grosso plans to introduce legislation Sept. 17 that would legalize the recreational use of marijuana in the city — with a dance with Mary Jane possibly replacing the played-out Potomac two-step.

"If we're going to have alcohol legal in this country, I don't see any reason why we couldn't have marijuana legal," Grosso said — bluntly.

The bill will outline a plan for regulating and taxing marijuana sales and create licensing requirements for the Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration, Grosso told The Washington Times.

Grosso, who is still working on the bill, thinks a few attempts might be needed before the legislation passes, but hopes this first round will spark a debate.

Colorado Springs, Colorado mother of two, Heather Jackson: “By the time the fourth conventional drug didn’t work, you have a .8% chance of any other pharmaceutical working,” Jackson told me there on the statehouse steps. “Those are just the facts. I was desperate after the fourth drug failed – that was Felbatol.”

But Jackson, working with Zaki’s neurologist Dr. Brian Grabert and networking with other parents of epileptic children, kept researching options. “By this point, in late 2010, we’d tried plenty of remedies that might be considered alternative, from chiropractics to acupuncture,” she said. “I came to cannabis, with no experience with it, the same way I came to every pharmaceutical and other treatment that we tried: after tons of research. I brought it to Dr. Grabert and we probably discussed it for a year. By the end of 2011 Zaki’s EEG was not looking good. He was in a real valley. He would stop breathing during some of his seizures, which was terrifying. So I showed up at the doctor’s appointment holding our (state cannabis program) application, and told Dr. Grabert that he could sign it or not. He said ‘it’s worth a try.’ Thank God for that.”

Using an orally administered tincture made from a CBD-rich strain called Charlotte’s Web (developed in Colorado by breeders The Stanley Brothers for a young epileptic girl named Charlotte) that she obtained from a dispensary under Colorado’s medical cannabis program, Jackson said, “He had 200 seizures the night before we began his cannabis regimen, and none the next day.”

Imagine if you were that parent. Now imagine if you couldn’t acquire that effective remedy. That’s why Jackson has formed an outreach organization called Realm of Caring Foundation, which she explained as a place for nervous parents of an ill child to make that first call. “People can speak to someone on the phone, ask questions, and get the paperwork rolling if their doctor agrees that cannabis can help, whether it’s epilepsy, cancer or other serious conditions,” she said. “We’ve had ten families relocate to Colorado to have access to this strain just in the last month. That’s amazing to me.” Recent profiles of Zaki’s story in the Washington Post and on CNN didn’t hurt.

A deputy attorney general told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that the Justice Department had begun working with Treasury officials and financial regulators to clarify how it legally deals with banks and other businesses that serve marijuana dispensaries and growers in states that have legalized the drug for medical or recreational use.

The deputy attorney general, James M. Cole, said the Obama administration was dedicated to enforcing federal drug laws and was choosing the best among a number of imperfect solutions by relying on states to regulate marijuana “from seed to sale.”

Financial institutions, security providers and landlords that serve marijuana businesses can be prosecuted for racketeering, money laundering and trafficking under current federal laws, which Mr. Leahy said also hinder states in regulating the banking and taxation of growers and dispensaries.

But Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the panel’s ranking Republican, said the Justice Department move was a step toward broad legalization of marijuana that would result in disastrous consequences for public safety and might violate international treaties. More broadly, he and other critics said, the Justice Department’s new policy was another example of the Obama administration’s picking which laws to enforce and which to disregard.