HB1, if passed, will give Maryland voters the opportunity to decide whether recreational marijuana should be legal in Maryland, and will be placed on the ballots as a referendum vote in November. If the referendum passes, then marijuana will become legal for recreational purposes (it is already legal for medicinal purposes) in July 2023.
An alternate bill, SB692, would legalize it during the 2022 legislative session, without waiting until November for the referendum, thereby making it legal by July 2022 –a full year before HB1. SB692, as well as HB837 and SB833 propose what to do with the tax dollars collected from the sale of recreational marijuana, sets legal limits for how much should be considered personal and what amount crosses the threshold for distribution (still illegal), sets limits for how much can be grown for personal use, and proposes various measures to free individuals currently incarcerated on marijuana charges once it becomes legal. Another component of these bills is whether a portion of the tax dollars raised from the sale of marijuana, should be deposited in a restitution fund to help communities that have been the hardest hit by ‘War On Drugs’ policies –over-policing and incarceration –primarily in communities of color –to help repair the harm caused by decades of these economically damaging policies.
Restitution Fund
SB692 goes the farthest in proposing serious oversight measures for the reparations portion of these proposed bills. The fund would be similar to the Opioid Restitution Funds. The idea there was that our state and local governments, operating with our hard-earned tax dollars, would sue the pharmaceutical companies for fraudulent marketing on behalf of those who were harmed –individuals and families –on the pretense that these funds were going to trickle down to help those harmed.
But what is happening is that the funds are trickling to local governments who are relying largely on the OITs –the Opioid Intervention Teams –to tell them how to spend it. These teams, comprised of agency executives and community leaders, have little knowledge of opioid addiction, have little incentive to solve the problem, and often have zero motivation to do ANYTHING about it.
In contrast, you have the peer founded and operated, incorporated, community-based non-profits working their ever-loving behinds off for free –motivated to save the lives of people they know and love –and while they’re at it, the entire community. Meanwhile, the heads of agencies who are getting the funding –are dreaming up their own programs, regardless of whether they work or not –Or they are implementing programs that they have watched the grassroots community-based organizations successfully operate and manage for years with volunteers on a $0 budget –calling it their “new pilot program”, and totally ignoring the fact that a peer-founded organization in their own community has already been successfully operating and managing the same program for years.
There is no one who has been harmed on these county-led teams –nor does there even need to be anyone with first-hand knowledge or experience with opiate use or overdose. When organizations and community members with ‘lived experience’ attempt to participate, or at least sit-in –we are excluded. The point of view of people who have lived it –and may have insights into what the barriers are to solving the problem, and what will work, are simply blocked.
I project that this is the same way that a Cannabis Restitution Fund will work unless there are serious measures taken to prevent it. The funds will be siphoned off by for-profit businesses, police departments, and local government operated programs before it ever touches the hands of any grassroots organization that has been doing the heavy lifting in communities for years –OR before it assists the families who were forced to survive –perhaps without a major breadwinner for many years –impacting that family well into their future –because our government officials decided that smoking pot was jailable.
If you want restitution funds to actually serve as restitution, then the legislature must take responsibility for actually walking through and outlining a process for exactly how these funds are going to get down to those they are supposed to provide restitution to –otherwise the greedy hands of our local governments WILL make sure that these funds NEVER provide restitution to those harmed, nor provide financial sustainability for any grassroots organization that has been assisting those harmed for years without funding.
War On Drugs
Secondly, every bill except SB692, is a continuation of the ‘War-On-Drugs’ –a policy inherent in ANY bill that does not legalize possession outright. The news has been out for years now –The ‘War on Drugs’ has failed –decade after decade after decade. For some reason, we fail to change our old outdated, ineffective policies, despite the plethora of evidence showing what does and does not work.
It seems ironic to me that we continue to prosecute people who use drugs –escalating their possession charges to distribution charges because we are so fixated on sending them to rot in jail, while we allowed America’s pharmaceutical manufacturing executives to create a 25 billion dollar / year industry –in opioid manufacturing alone, and we have sent absolutely no one to jail for the 218,600 deaths caused by fraudulently marketing prescription opioids.
It has become obvious that those who make laws value profits over lives as long as the profits are made by people they perceive as LIKE themselves, while allowing our justice system to cruelly punish those who attempt to market their own LESS deadly drugs –marijuana, sometimes as their best or only means of supporting their families –because THOSE people are somehow NOT perceived to be LIKE them.
Harm Caused
Six years after we Marylanders passed the landmark Justice Reinvestment Act –we still have not implemented it. As I recall, that bill called for restitution funds passed down to grassroots organizations from the savings derived from no longer needing to spend money on prosecuting low level drug crimes like marijuana. But drug crime is STILL the number #1 reason that offenders in Maryland are sent to prison, and grassroots non-profits assisting families with children left parentless, and helping returning citizens get back on their feet and build a responsible and productive life, are still waiting for those “trickle-down funds”.
But the thing I feel MOST ashamed about, on behalf of ALL Marylanders, is that the proportion of Maryland’s black prison population is more than double the national average of 32%. This is according to a 2019 report by the Justice Policy Institute, Rethinking Approaches to Over Incarceration of Black Young Adults in Maryland. Here is a quote from the Report, “Maryland leads the nation in incarcerating young Black men, sentenced to the longest prison terms, at a rate 25% higher than the next nearest state — Mississippi”.
WAIT……WHAT??? Maryland is the worst state in America for being a big fat bigot state –worse than a backwater state like Mississippi??? Are we being more honest with ourselves if we change our state nickname from The Free State to the BIGOT STATE?
It is a tragedy that our children –black, brown, or peachy, continue to be incarcerated for drug crimes throughout the state –particularly for something as innocuous as smoking weed. Marilyn Mosby, Baltimore State’s Attorney, seems to be the only government official to wave the white flag and surrender in Maryland’s FAILED ‘War On Drugs.’ She is not prosecuting anyone for drug crimes.
How long will it take until our elected officials STOP taking away people’s freedom and forcing human beings into a so-called justice system where they are treated less humanely than wild animals caged in a zoo –for engaging in a behavior that is less dangerous to society than drinking alcohol.