Maryland Governor Says Personal Experience With Marijuana And Criminal Legal System Informed Mass Pardons

The governor of Maryland says the mass pardon he issued for prior marijuana convictions was about more than addressing the public policy consequences of criminalization. As someone who was exposed to the criminal legal system at an early age, and having been a medical cannabis patient himself, he said there’s an important personal psychological impact of attaining that relief.

Gov. Wes Moore (D) spoke with Vlad TV about his personal experience with cannabis and the criminal justice system in an interview that was released on Sunday. He stressed that part of what motivated him to grant historic relief to people who’ve been criminalized over marijuana was to ameliorate not only the “practical” consequences of a conviction but also the “emotional” repercussions.

Moore, who issued over 175,000 pardons for cannabis and paraphernalia convictions in June, said the move was “important because I want people to be able to better enter into an economy” and also because he “did not understand how we continue to punish people for something that’s no longer illegal in my state.”

“I did it because you cannot talk about the benefits of legalization if you don’t deal with the consequences of criminalization,” the governor said, adding that he was “tired of hearing stories” about people who’ve struggled with issues such as employment due to decades-long convictions for minor marijuana offenses.

What’s partly informed his perspective is his personal experience with law enforcement and cannabis. When he was 11 years old, Moore said he was picked up by police after being caught tagging in New York City. He was eventually released without getting a criminal record, which he described as a “blessing” given what he now knows about the “consequences of kids getting caught up in a juvenile justice system” and “how problematic it is having any any contact with the criminal justice system.”

“You just realize how sometimes it’s these small decisions that we make that can have a huge impact on what type of life we have the opportunity to live. And in many cases, you’re making those decisions before you’re even fully processing how you think about these things,” he said. “So it was an important moment in my life and an important lesson learned for me too.”

With respect to the cannabis pardons, Moore said there was “a level of unfairness that had to be addressed with it—but also at the same time, it is about how do we change and alter the psychology of people and not make every sentence a life sentence and really give people an opportunity to understand that rehabilitation can be a real thing?”

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The governor also reflected on the fact that, while he earned a strong majority of support to get into office in 2022, the marijuana legalization referendum that was on the ballot alongside his own name passed with an even stronger majority.

“The only thing that beat me that year was cannabis,” he said. “So this is something that, for the people of my state, they’re like, ‘We want a recreational market.’ For many people—many of us, myself included—we’ve used cannabis.”

“I’m a person who’s had a medical license for cannabis, and so it’s like so, ‘How do we now have a legal market that’s in place—that you have people who are literally using it for medicinal reasons—and you have people who can’t get a barber’s license because they have a conviction on their record? People who can’t get a government contract because they have a conviction, right?” he said. “So there really had to be a different way that we applied this process and applied this work that actually honored that second chances should actually mean something.”

Last month, Moore and the president of the NAACP also promoted the state’s historic mass marijuana pardon, which they said would unlock the economic potential of people targeted by criminalization. But the governor also stressed the need to get the word out about next steps for the majority of pardon recipients whose records weren’t automatically expunged by his clemency move.

Moore has also gained praise from the White House and other officials such as Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) for his cannabis clemency move.

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Meanwhile, since Maryland’s adult-use cannabis market launched in July of last year, licensed retailers have sold more than $1.1 billion worth of legal marijuana products, including more than $700 million to adult consumers and $400 million in medical marijuana, the Maryland Cannabis Administration (MCA) said last month.

During the first quarter of 2024, meanwhile, the state collected nearly $15 million in marijuana sales tax revenue—an increase of less than 0.7 percent compared to the previous quarter.

Aside from cannabis, the governor in May also signed a pair of bills into law to establish a psychedelics task force that will study legal access to substances like psilocybin and DMT.

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Photo courtesy of Chris Wallis // Side Pocket Images.