Maryland to Automatically Shield Criminal Records Associated with Low-Level Cannabis Convictions – Ganjapreneur | Where to buy Skittles Moonrock online

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) on Monday signed into law a bill requiring state officials to automatically shield criminal records associated with low-level cannabis convictions from public view. Under the law, the Maryland Judiciary Case Search database may no longer “in any way refer to the existence of records of a charge of possession of cannabis in a case with electronic records if the charge resulted in a conviction that was later pardoned by the Governor.”

Last year, Moore, pardoned 175,000 cannabis convictions, affecting about 100,000 individuals. Pardons forgive past crimes but neither expunge them nor shield them from public view.

In a statement following the bill’s passage, NORML’s Deputy Director Paul Armentano noted that “Hundreds of thousands of Americans unduly carry the burden and stigma of a past conviction for behavior that most Americans, and a growing number of states, no longer consider to be a crime.”

“Our sense of justice and our principles of fairness demand that elected officials and the courts move swiftly to right the past wrongs of cannabis prohibition and criminalization,” — Armentano in a statement

According to publicly available data compiled by NORML, states and localities have issued over 350,000 cannabis-related pardons and more than 2 million cannabis-related expungements since 2018.

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