The Montgomery County Council unanimously passed legislation Tuesday that will create a commission to determine how funds raised through cannabis taxes would be distributed to communities most impacted by the prior prohibition against cannabis use and sales.
In November 2022, Maryland voters overwhelmingly supported legalization of cannabis—more than 67% of voters were in favor. The Maryland General Assembly spent much of its 2023 session working on legislation to regulate and oversee cannabis use and sales in the state.
One of the state laws passed by legislators created the state’s Community Reinvestment and Repair Fund, which holds 35% of cannabis revenues from the new state recreational cannabis excise tax. Those funds will be split among Maryland jurisdictions, proportionate to the rate at which their residents faced prosecution for cannabis possession charges. Each jurisdiction is responsible for creating policies and methods for distributing those funds to community-based organizations.
“For the same actions that are now generating wealth for others, for decades, there have been communities, disproportionately Black communities, being criminalized and torn apart,” councilmember Kristin Mink (D-Dist. 5), one of the lead sponsors of the bill, said at a press conference Tuesday following the legislation’s passage at the council meeting held in Rockville.
The legislation was also sponsored by councilmembers Will Jawando (D-At-large) and Laurie-Anne Sayles (D-At-large).
“I think it’s important to acknowledge the severe level of harm that has been done over many, many, many decades, and that this will not fix it, but it is a signal, and an important signal, that we are moving in a direction towards understanding the harm that was done,” Jawando said Tuesday.
With the bill’s passage, the county bill will be required to create the Montgomery County Community Reinvestment and Repair Fund Commission. The panel will be made up of 13 voting members and one non-voting ex-officio member. At least one member will represent “a service provider for incarcerated persons or persons with a criminal record” and at least one member would be a person who was previously incarcerated or has a criminal history, according to the draft legislation, which does not elaborate on the specific type of criminal history. Members will be selected by the council and county executive through an application process and would receive a $1,000 yearly stipend. The director of the Department of Health and Human Services would serve as the ex-officio member.
“In drafting this bill, it was recognized that it would be inappropriate for a government office to take the lead in deciding how this money is impacted. Communities must take the lead,” Mink said Tuesday.
The commission will be tasked with recommending grants the county could be eligible to receive, identifying community-based programs and organizations that support marginalized communities, and recommending new or bolstering existing county programs to support people impacted by previous cannabis prohibition.
“The war on drugs has devastated communities all across the state of America, Maryland and specifically here in Montgomery County, cannabis prohibition policy played a significant role in over-policing the black community that fueled mass incarceration,” said Hashim Jabar, co-executive director of Racial Justice NOW! said at the press conference Tuesday. “The biggest beneficiaries of legalization of a substance that once contributed to the denigration of black communities are wealthy and mostly white companies. The [Community] Reinvestment and Repair commission … is one small but important step in the direction of investing resources directly into the communities most impacted by the war on drugs.”
Jabar said the new program won’t fix everything, but that he is glad to see the council working closely on this issue.