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The governor's office will be making the pardons in a live stream on X.
In an interview with the Washington Post, the Democratic governor said he was "ecstatic" to "right a lot of historical wrongs.
"If you want to be able to create inclusive economic growth, it means you have to start removing these barriers that continue to disproportionately sit on communities of color."
Maryland legalized cannabis by referendum and, last March, the state conducted the first adult use cannabis licensing round. All 174 licenses were awarded to social equity applicants, the governor said — a first for the nation.
"We know that legalization does not turn back the clock on decades of harm that was caused by this war on drugs," Moore said. "Legalization does not erase the fact that nearly half of all drug arrests in Maryland during the early 2000s were for cannabis.
"It does not erase the fact that black Marylanders were three-times more likely to be arrested for cannabis than white Marylanders before legalization."
Further, Moore acknowledged that having conviction on someone's record means having harder time with everything.
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