by HANNAH GASKILL | BALTIMORE SUN
Thu, June 19th 2025 at 7:18 PM
In recognition of Juneteenth, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore on Thursday announced the pardon of nearly 7,000 additional cannabis-related convictions and the allocation of $400 million in state funds to communities historically impacted by discriminatory policies.
“We saw that, even after Juneteenth, there were still some very creative policies that were put in place focusing on increasing a racial wealth gap and having some of the greatest wealth theft that we saw in our nation’s history,” Moore, a Democrat, said in a Thursday morning interview with The Baltimore Sun.
“This is one of the most aggressive actions in our state’s history to make a focused effort to be able to target state investments that help reverse decades of racist and discriminatory policies.”
The executive clemency order, issued during a visit to Bethel AME Church in Cambridge, clears 6,938 cases of simple cannabis possession that were not included in Moore’s June 2024 mass pardon of more than 175,000 offenses. State officials said those cases were initially missed due to data coding errors in the Maryland Judiciary’s system. The cases were identified during preparations to implement the governor’s recently passed Expungement Reform Act.
Comments by Charlene Merrill
Gov. Wes Moore announced the allocation of $400 million in state funds to communities impacted by “discriminatory policies” as part of his pardon of nearly 7,000 additional cannabis-related convictions. The allocation of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to unspecified communities might well be seen as “reparations” provided without a proper vote. Whether discriminatory policies have taken place in certain communities, and whether reparations need to be made, should be decided by a vote of Maryland state representatives, or possibly by a referendum of the people of Maryland. Moore should not have the power to simply decide to give taxpayer dollars from one community to another. Maryland went from a $5.5 billion surplus when Moore took office in Jan. 2023, to a $3.3 billion deficit as of Mar. 2025.