WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — The governor of the US state of Maryland issued a mass pardon of drug offenses on Monday, in a far-reaching move forgiving 175,000 low-level marijuana convictions across multiple decades.

Democrat Wes Moore said his act — “the most sweeping state-level pardon” in American history — was aimed at addressing social and economic injustices disproportionately impacting tens of thousands of Black people.

Moore, the eastern state’s first Black governor, said he intended to right the “decades of harm” wrought by drug policy that had disproportionately targeted African Americans, depriving them of access to housing, education and employment.

Nearly half of all state drug arrests during the early 2000s were for cannabis, he said, with Black Marylanders three times more likely to be detained over cannabis-related charges than white residents.

And while the state’s population of six million is 33 percent Black, more than 70 percent of Maryland’s male incarcerated population is Black.

“Today, we take a big step enacting the kinds of policies that can reverse the harm of the past and to help us to work together to build a brighter future,” Moore said as he signed the pardons into law in a ceremony in state capital Annapolis.

After a state-wide referendum, Maryland legalized cannabis for adults and retail sales of the drug in 2023.

The governor said the pardons would extend to anyone with a misdemeanor conviction for possession of marijuana or paraphernalia.