Maryland Governor Wes Moore signed an executive order pardoning more than 175,000 marijuana-related convictions, calling it “the most sweeping state-level pardon in any state in American history.” The action clears records for possession of cannabis and cannabis paraphernalia — offenses that, for decades, fell hardest on Black Marylanders, who were three times more likely to be arrested for cannabis than white residents before legalization.
At a glance
- Maryland marijuana pardons: More than 175,000 convictions for cannabis possession and paraphernalia are cleared under the executive order signed by Governor Moore.
- Racial disparity in drug arrests: Nearly half of all drug arrests in Maryland in the early 2000s were for cannabis, and Black residents bore a disproportionate share of those arrests and their lasting consequences.
- Cannabis legalization timeline: Maryland made recreational cannabis legal for adults on July 1, 2023 C.E. — but legalization alone left hundreds of thousands of old convictions untouched on people’s records.
Why a pardon matters beyond legalization
When Maryland legalized recreational cannabis, it removed a future harm. What it could not do was reach back in time.
A conviction on someone’s record — even for a decades-old cannabis charge — still affects housing applications, job searches, and access to education. Moore made that point plainly at the signing: “People who were arrested for cannabis three or four or 40 years ago still have those convictions on their records to this day.” The pardons are designed to break that cycle of compounding consequence.
Governor Moore was direct about what the action cannot do. It won’t, he said, “turn back the clock on decades of harm that was caused by this war on drugs.” The acknowledgment matters. Mass pardons are a meaningful step, but they don’t restore lost time, lost jobs, or damaged family stability — and advocates note that expungement processes can still be slow and uneven in practice.
The scale of the action
No other U.S. state has issued a pardon of this size. For comparison, the ACLU has documented that cannabis arrests disproportionately targeted Black Americans at a national level for decades, even in states where enforcement was comparatively lenient.
Maryland’s move follows a wave of state-level cannabis reform across the U.S. But reforming the law going forward and repairing the record of the past are two separate tasks. This executive order addresses the second one at a scale that no state has attempted before.
Moore signed the order at the Maryland State House, framing it as a moment of accountability as much as celebration. “We cannot celebrate the benefits of legalization if we do not address the consequences of criminalization,” he said.
Federal momentum building alongside state action
The Maryland pardons arrived at a moment of wider movement on federal cannabis policy. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is in the process of rescheduling marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III, a change that would reduce federal penalties for possession. The U.S. Justice Department submitted the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to the Office of the Federal Register, opening a 60-day public comment period before a final scheduling recommendation can be made.
Rescheduling would not legalize cannabis federally, but it would signal a significant shift in how the federal government classifies and penalizes its use. NPR has reported on the range of practical effects rescheduling could have — from easing research restrictions to reducing criminal exposure for individuals in states where cannabis remains illegal.
Together, state-level pardons and federal rescheduling represent two tracks of reform moving in the same direction, even if neither fully resolves the long backlog of harm from the war on drugs. The Drug Policy Alliance estimates that cannabis enforcement has produced millions of arrests across the U.S. since the 1970s — a number that makes even the largest state pardon a partial remedy.
A record, and a beginning
For the 175,000 people whose records are now cleared in Maryland, the practical effects could be significant — a housing application no longer complicated by an old charge, a job interview that doesn’t require an explanation. That’s a quiet but real change in daily life.
Criminal justice reform advocates, including groups that have worked for years on racial equity in sentencing, have noted that pardons of this kind are most effective when paired with active expungement processes — meaning records are not just pardoned but physically cleared from databases that employers and landlords access. Whether Maryland’s implementation reaches that level of follow-through remains a question advocates are watching closely.
Still, the milestone stands. The largest state-level pardon in U.S. history, signed in the same building where Maryland’s laws were written, points toward a more honest accounting of what the war on drugs cost — and who paid the price.
Read more
For more on this story, see: ABC News
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- U.K. cancer death rates drop to their lowest level on record
- Alzheimer’s risk cut in half by drug in landmark prevention trial
- The Good News for Humankind archive on criminal justice reform
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