Maryland's Sexy Zaddy Governor Pardons 175,000 Potheads

Could Wes Moore BE any more of an upgrade from Larry Hogan?

Wes Moore, righting wrongs

Maryland’s devastatingly attractive governor, Wes Moore, just announced a pardon for 175,000 people convicted of low-level marijuana offenses (gift link), an action that will automatically forgive every misdemeanor possession charge in the state’s electronic court records system, and all misdemeanor paraphernalia charges tied to use or possession, wowzers!

Marijuana, also known as cannabis, the devil’s lettuce, sticky icky icky, snootchie bootchie, woochy poochie, chronic, reefer, Mary Jane, ganja, jaja, zaza, hay, doobage, 420, green, spliffereeno, dank, Ashin’ Kusher, cheeba, budski, cheech and/or chong, funky falafel, jazz cabbage, party parsley, pineapple express, schwag, wacky baccky, Alice B. Toklas, mota, and/or potiguaya, has been legal for recreational use in Maryland since July of 2023. Since then, the state has been 24/7 enveloped in a cloud that smells like a skunk’s asshole, and has made $700 million from the taxes, and counting.

So, it’s rather unfair that there are still people who can’t get jobs, housing, scholarships and so on due to criminal records for what soccer moms now freely enjoy in their minivans before shopping at Target. 

Extra unfair, marijuana arrests have disproportionately affected the Black community, with Black people historically more than twice as likely than White people to be arrested for possession in Maryland, and almost four times more likely nationally, even though use rates in the Black and white communities are the same. 

That’s no coincidence. In 1994, John Ehrlichman, Richard Nixon’s assistant for domestic affairs, balls-out admitted to Harper’s Magazine reporter Dan Baum that targeting Black people and hippies was what the drug war was all about to begin with: 

The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.

And yet, as recently as 2020 under the governorship of stale corndog Larry Hogan, Maryland was still arresting more than 10,000 people a year for low-level pot offenses.

Maryland’s pardons add to the more than two million people who have had their weed arrests pardoned or expunged.

Wes sure has been a tall drink of water. Last week he announced that the Port of Baltimore has re-opened, in an incredible 78 days after a ship hit the span of the Francis Scott Key bridge, killing six workers and halting traffic because the channel was clogged with debris. He celebrated Father’s Day with his adorable children. 

What an upgrade that guy is! Hogan, the soggy Republican crabcake now running for US Senate, vetoed a decriminalization bill in 2016, and refused to sign an adult-use bill in 2022. Unlike Larry, who’s been cosplaying in a flak vest to rrrr grrr about the border, Wes was an actual captain in the Army. Larry has a BA from Florida State, and Wes is a Rhodes Scholar with a master’s in international relations from Oxford. He’s written multiple books, which are actually quite good, and he looks like Tyson Beckford, if Tyson was a Zaddy. Isn’t he dreamy?

From Wes Moore’s Facebook

Sorry, what were we talking about? Our short-term memory is shot!

[Washington Post / Harper’s Magazine]