Those who believe in fate might have concluded that it must have been destiny for a leader with Jamaican heritage to be the one to forgive 175,000 low-level marijuana convictions in the state of Maryland in the US this week.

Mr Wes Moore, the first African American governor of Maryland, and whose mother hails from Trelawny, Jamaica, on Monday announced the decision he described as “the most sweeping state-level pardon” in US history.

The mass pardon for drug offences across multiple decades was aimed at addressing social and economic injustices disproportionately impacting tens of thousands of black people, Governor Moore said, as he signed the pardons into law in a ceremony in the capital Annapolis.

Mr Moore 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 per cent black, more than 70 per cent of Maryland’s male incarcerated population is black, Mr Moore, a Democrat, complained.

We would not be surprised to learn that a proportion of the convictions would involve Jamaicans, who comprise a big chunk of Maryland’s black population. Moreover it would be good news for the marijuana lobby, including those in Jamaica who advocate the release of people incarcerated for ganja possession.

“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. This is a big deal. This is a really big deal,” said Governor Moore.

After a state-wide referendum, Maryland legalised cannabis for adults and retail sales of the drug in 2023, Agence France Presse reported.

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

Supporting Mr Moore, Maryland’s Attorney General Anthony Brown was quoted as saying the data had shown deeply rooted bias in drug-related arrests and sentencing, describing the cannabis convictions for hundreds of thousands of people as “Scarlet Letters, modern day shackles”.

Many Jamaicans convicted here at home for small amounts of ganja can relate to their Maryland counterparts.

“I was thrown out of school, denied access to my high school education, ripped from my family and my friends, and had to endure two years of isolation for a simple cannabis possession charge,” said Mr Jason Ortiz, director of strategic initiatives for the Last Prisoner Project, who recounted being arrested at age 16.

Readers will recall that just shy of a year ago Governor Moore was conferred with an honorary doctorate by the University of the Commonwealth Caribbean at a ceremony at the National Arena in St Andrew.

“I think about the role that Jamaica has played in my life, in my journey, in my family. You cannot understand my journey without understanding Jamaica. It really is the fabric that runs all around me…” Governor Moore told the Jamaica Observer’s Vernon Davidson at the time.

We would like to believe that the Jamaican influence on his life had a bearing on his inclination to correct social and economic injustices.