Maryland Governor Pardons 175,000 Marijuana Convictions In Sweeping Order
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore issued 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 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.
“We aren’t nibbling around the edges. We are taking actions that are intentional, that are sweeping and unapologetic,” Moore said at an Annapolis event interrupted three times by standing ovations. “Policymaking is powerful. And if you look at the past, you see how policies have been intentionally deployed to hold back entire communities.”
Moore called the scope of his pardons “the most far-reaching and aggressive” executive action among officials nationwide who have sought to unwind criminal justice inequities with the growing legalization of marijuana.Nine other states and multiple cities have pardoned hundreds of thousands of old marijuana convictions in recent years, according to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Legalized marijuana markets reap billions in revenue for state governments each year, and polls show public sentiment on the drug has also turned — with more people both embracing cannabis use and repudiating racial disparities exacerbated by the War on Drugs.
“You can’t hold people accountable for possession of marijuana when you’ve got a dispensary on almost every corner,” he said.
Nationwide, according to the ACLU, Black people were more than three times more likely than White people to be arrested for marijuana possession. President Biden in 2022 issued a mass pardon of federal marijuana convictions — a reprieve for roughly 6,500 people — and urged governors to follow suit in states, where the vast majority of marijuana prosecutions take place.
Maryland’s pardon action rivals only Massachusetts, where the governor and an executive council together issued a blanket pardon in March expected to affect hundreds of thousands of people.
What are Maryland’s weed laws?
A budding marijuana plant grows at the Verano cultivation facility in Jessup, MD on June 14, 2023. (Minh Connors/The Washington Post)
Recreational marijuana is legal in Maryland. Here’s what we know about Maryland’s relaxed marijuana laws, which went into effect in 2023, clearing the way for adults 21 and older to buy and use the drug recreationally.
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But Moore’s pardons appear to stand alone in the impact to communities of color in a state known for having one of the nation’s worst records for disproportionately incarcerating Black people for any crimes. More than 70 percent of the state’s male incarcerated population is Black, according to state data, more than double their proportion in society.
In announcing the pardons, he directly addressed how policies in Maryland and nationwide have systematically held back people of color — through incarceration and restricted access to jobs and housing.
“We’re talking about tools that have led to an eight-to-one racial wealth gap in our state — because we know that we do not get to an eight-to-one racial wealth gap because one group is working eight times harder,” he said.
Moore introduced Shiloh Jordan, 32, who was once fired on his second day of a job because a background check revealed a lone cannabis possession charge. Jordan went on to earn a college degree and build a career.
“Shiloh was not handed a second chance, he built one for himself, despite the odds, despite a system that was not built to support those actions,” Moore said.
Jordan handed Moore the pen used to sign the mass pardons, an orange retractable one from the Last Prisoner Project, an advocacy group for drug policy reform. Jordan told reporters that despite overcoming the conviction, “it really bothered me” to have it hang over him.
Maryland, the most diverse state on the East Coast, has a dramatically higher concentration of Black people compared with other states that have issued broad pardons for marijuana: 33 percent of Maryland’s population is Black, while the next highest is Illinois, with 15 percent.
Maryland is the only state in the D.C. region that has fully legalized cannabis sales, though both the District and Virginia have decriminalized possession and have gray markets for the drug. Virginia and D.C. have not issued mass pardons of cannabis convictions, according to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, but Biden’s pardons had impact in D.C. because they applied to thousands of people arrested on federal land.
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.”
Reducing the state’s mass incarceration disparity has been a chief goal of Moore, Brown and Maryland Public Defender Natasha Dartigue, who are all the first Black people to hold their offices in the state. Brown and Dartigue have launched a prosecutor-defender partnership to study the “the entire continuum of the criminal system,” from stops with law enforcement to reentry, trying to detect all junctures where discretion or bias could influence how justice is applied, and ultimately reform it.
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