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By Christine Dolan
Oprah-endorsed Democratic Maryland Governor Wes Moore signed an executive order pardoning an estimated 175,000 of marijuana-related convictions in Maryland on Monday.
Could the governor be cleaning up a conflict of interest or creating one?
The Maryland Governor is known to be pot-friendly.
Moore released $46.5 million of previously-frozen funds to support the growth of the marijuana businesses in Maryland in January 2023.
The governor has owned nearly $1.2 million shares in a cannabis company that has done business in Maryland before putting his assets in a blind trust in May 2023.
Moore announced on Monday that he would pardon anyone convicted of a marijuana possession charge or a drug paraphernalia charge tied to the possession or use of marijuana at his signing ceremony.
He stressed that the pardons will help to correct past harms on “communities of color” through the "war on drugs” noting that his actions coincide with the week of Juneteenth.
“Our current reality of disproportionate arrests and convictions are the residuals of slavery,” Democratic Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown said on Monday.
“Cannabis convictions for hundreds of thousands of people here in Maryland were scarlet letters, modern day shackles,” he continued. “I can almost hear the clanging of those shackles falling to the floor with your pardon this morning, governor.”
You can watch the governor’s announcement here in full.
Individuals covered by Moore’s decision will see their pardons marked in court records within two weeks and will be removed from criminal background check databases within 10 months. Their convictions will not be removed in public records.
The pardons will not affect anyone currently incarcerated being released from prison. No one in Maryland is currently imprisoned for minor possession. Prosecutions for criminal marijuana possession have stopped in Maryland as the state legalized recreational marijuana use on July 1, 2023.
Maryland joins the list of states which have pardoned hundreds of thousands convicted of similar offenses in Oregon, Massachusetts, Colorado, Illinois, Washington, Nevada, Pennsylvania, North Dakota and Wisconsin.
Some states, like California have opted to expunge, seal or dismiss convictions, but not full pardons.
