Governor pardons thousands of cannabis convicts
Maryland’s Governor has pardoned more than 175,000 people convicted of cannabis offences, in a move to address “decades of harm caused by the war on drugs”.
Wes Moore said his Executive Order marked “the most sweeping state-level pardon in American history” and “the largest such action in our nation’s history”,
“Maryland is going to use this moment to right many historical wrongs,” he added.
Cannabis has been legal in Maryland for nearly a year, and more than half of all Americans now live in a state where cannabis is legal.
The Federal Government is also reclassifying the drug, and President Joe Biden has twice issued mass pardons for US citizens facing possession charges.
Mr Moore, 45, a rising star in the Democratic Party, said the state had rolled out “one of the best and most equitable legal markets in the country” since the drug was legalised in a referendum.
“Legalisation does not turn back the clock on decades of harm caused by the war on drugs,” he said on Monday at the state capitol in Annapolis.
“We cannot celebrate the benefits of legalisation if we do not address the consequences of criminalisation.”
A 2022 state report found that, while white Marylanders use cannabis at higher rates than their black counterparts, black Marylanders were more than twice as likely to be arrested on possession charges before legalisation.
One in three state residents is black. However, state data shows that more than two in three men in prison are black.
Attorney General Anthony Brown said the “long overdue” move would effectively undo the “modern day shackles” of racial bias in the policing of cannabis.
