
By Michelle Watson, Kristina Sgueglia and Dakin Andone, CNN
(CNN) — Maryland’s governor pardoned more than 175,000 marijuana convictions Monday – a significant act of mass clemency that reflects the rapidly changing attitudes toward a drug that more than half of Americans want to see legalized.
The pardons by Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, will forgive low-level marijuana possession and certain paraphernalia charges for an estimated 100,000 people, the governor’s office said, noting it was possible for a person to have more than one conviction pardoned.
The Washington Post first reported the news.
“This executive order is the most sweeping state level pardon in any state in American history,” Moore said at a signing event Monday, almost two years after Maryland voters approved a constitutional amendment legalizing recreational marijuana for people 21 and older.
Monday’s action – which will also apply to people who have died, the Post reported – will not result in people being freed from incarceration, the governor’s office said. But it will result in the pardons of more than 150,000 misdemeanor convictions for simple possession of cannabis and more than 18,000 misdemeanor convictions for use or possession with intent to use drug paraphernalia. About 25% of those convictions stem from the city of Baltimore, per Moore’s office.
Marylanders approved recreational cannabis for adult use amid a marked change in the way cannabis is viewed by the public: In November 2023, a record 70% of Americans surveyed by Gallup said they supported cannabis legalization. In 2014, the share was 51%.
Officials framed the pardons as an effort to undo the lasting harm left by these convictions, which are disproportionately borne by Black and brown people. The pardons coincide this week with Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the US.
“We cannot celebrate the benefits of legalization,” Moore said, “if we do not address the consequences of criminalization.”
“Our current reality of disproportionate arrests and convictions are the residuals of slavery. The war on drugs was a war on communities of color,” Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown said at Monday’s event. “The data shows the deeply rooted bias in drug related arrests and sentencing.”
“Cannabis convictions for hundreds of thousands of people here in Maryland were scarlet letters, modern day shackles,” he said. “I can almost hear the clanging of those shackles falling to the floor with your pardon this morning, governor.”
Restrictions easing
For more than 50 years, marijuana has been categorized as a Schedule I substance — alongside drugs like heroin and ecstasy, considered to have no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse — and subject to the strictest of restrictions.
But in April, the Biden administration moved to reclassify marijuana as a lower-risk substance. The US Department of Justice recommended it be rescheduled as a Schedule III controlled substance, a classification shared by prescription drugs such as ketamine and Tylenol with codeine.
The recommendation followed a US Food and Drug Administration review at the direction of Biden, who in 2022 had written to the Justice Department supporting marijuana’s reclassification.
Currently, 24 states, two territories and DC have legalized cannabis for adult recreational use, and 38 states allow medical use of cannabis products, according to data from the National Conference of State Legislatures.
State-licensed cannabis dispensaries and retail shops are expected to generate $32.1 billion in sales this year, according to estimates from MJBiz, a cannabis industry trade publication and events organizer.
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