Maryland governor to pardon 175,000 marijuana convictions in sweeping order

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Maryland governor to pardon 175,000 marijuana convictions in sweeping order

The blanket pardon by Gov. Wes Moore is among the country’s most far reaching and will forgive decades of low-level marijuana possession charges for an estimated 100,000 people.

By Erin Cox, Katie Shepherd and Katie Mettler
June 16, 2024 at 7:45 p.m. EDT

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore will issue a mass pardon of more than 175,000 marijuana convictions Monday morning, one of the nation’s most sweeping acts of clemency involving a drug now in widespread recreational use.

The pardons will forgive low-level marijuana possession charges for an estimated 100,000 people in what the Democratic governor said is a step to heal decades of social and economic injustice that disproportionately harms Black and Brown people. Moore noted criminal records have been used to deny housing, employment and education, holding people and their families back long after their sentences have been served.

“I’m ecstatic that we have a real opportunity with what I’m signing to right a lot of historical wrongs,” Moore said in an interview. “If you want to be able to create inclusive economic growth, it means you have to start removing these barriers that continue to disproportionately sit on communities of color.”

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Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown (D), called the pardons “certainly long overdue as a nation” and “a racial equity issue.” … “While the pardons will extend to anyone and everyone with a misdemeanor conviction for the possession of marijuana or paraphernalia, this unequivocally, without any doubt or reservation, disproportionately impacts — in a good way — Black and Brown Marylanders,” he said in an interview. “We are arrested and convicted at higher rates for possession and use of marijuana when the rate at which we used it was no different than any other category of people.”

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[twodogsbarking]

1. Thank you Governor. You have done a good thing.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

2. For years, cannabis crumbs affected a Maryland man's life. Now he sees a clearer future

For years, cannabis crumbs affected a Maryland man's life. Now he sees a clearer future

“She was just like, ‘Yep, you’re going to jail,’” Shiloh Jordan recalled of an incident from about a dozen years ago. “I’m like what? Are you serious?”

By Brian Witte and Lea Skene • Published 5 hours ago • Updated 5 hours ago

For years, a few crumbs of cannabis played an outsized role in shaping Shiloh Jordan’s life. … With a stroke of a pen by Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Jordan looks forward to that being in the past for him — as well as tens of thousands of other Marylanders who have been pardoned for misdemeanor marijuana convictions.

“I just feel like this is a big opportunity for people, you know, to not let struggles get in their way,” Jordan, 32, said in an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, a day after he watched the governor sign an executive order for the sweeping pardon of more than 175,000 convictions.

Jordan was in his early 20s when he was pulled over in Howard County, Maryland, for not wearing a seatbelt on his way home from work as a custodian at a nursing home. The officer said she smelled marijuana, and using a piece of tape, she found cannabis crumbs on the floor of the vehicle, Jordan said.

“She was just like, ‘Yep, you’re going to jail,’” Jordan recalled of the incident from about a dozen years ago. “I’m like what? Are you serious?”… “But that was the law back then, so she took me to jail, locked me up,” Jordan said. … He said he didn’t think much of the minor charge — until his second day at a new job when he was let go because a background check had uncovered his misdemeanor conviction. It was disheartening, and it made him think about the myriad challenges facing young people growing up in poverty, all the things that so often stand in the way of them staying on the straight and narrow, Jordan said.

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