This is us, zeen?
...a MONTH before Gov. Martin O'Malley signed a bill decriminalizing marijuana possession, Howard County cops raided my suburban home at 10am and handcuffed me, my wife, and my two adult sons while they tore the house apart, presumably looking for evidence of dealing pot.
What they found was my tender (not weed) garden plants under a couple fluorescent lights and about a few grams of weed in each of our rooms. One of our neighbors had reported people coming in and out of the house at all hours, which was nothing more than our working class family doing what working people do -virtually no outside visitors at all.
The 'investigation' consisted of a cop sitting outside of the house and observing my sons coming and going and a search of our TRASH which revealed the remains of a spent joint.
It was humiliating, but I'd guess the dozen cop cars they deployed to secure this family home and confiscate about 3 grams of really poor pot didn't go over so well with their commander who'd likely been promised a big Howard County-style pot bust before they lost the power to harass and terrorize citizens with their phony culture war.
We went to court and a nice judge gave us the fines that were already law by the time of our court dates. I look at it now as a event of honor to take the best HCPD could dish out and come out with a fine, and them with egg on their faces.
In the November 2022 elections, Maryland voters approved legalizing recreational marijuana in a constitutional amendment. The law went into effect July 1, 2023.
For me, that ended 50 years of terrorizing over weed. You can argue that a 13 year old shouldn't have been smoking pot, but I've craved it ever since I saw my sister sneak a hit off a waterpipe during our Jr. HS recess. After a lot of pleading, I spent the $5 I had on a nickle bag, and promptly had it stolen before I could get one hit by the kid with the waterpipe.
I spent most of my teen years in pursuit of pot (it would go miserably, predictably dry at the end of EVERY summer), and apart from a couple years off, here and there, I've been smoking all that time.
It's surreal to have as much as I want right now, with more a short drive away. No weird dealer relationships with all of that obsequious nonsense to get an overpriced bag of old, inferior weed.
I come from a generation where we had high test stuff like Columbian Red Bud, Hawaiian, Meshmican from Germany, even red, stringy, Panama Red that would shred your throat. There was a wide assortment of hash available , from different grades of blond, to the myriad grades of black and red hash. Then there were the hash oils in the same variety of yellow, red, and black.
I don't think any of the Maryland weed they have now comes close to ANY of the good stuff we had back then. Consider how illegal and how crazy it was for our generation to defy all of that convention and law. We were revolutionary and a bit reckless at the same time, but we managed a guerilla movement from school to school, from neighborhood to neighborhood, from Mexico, to Columbia, to wherever, with just us kids against just everybody in authority.
It was definitely a counterculture, as much as it was the mission of adults lording over us to make certain they wiped out all vestiges of pot culture, which they derisively labeled the 'drug culture.'
We built up our own world of enjoyment which was necessarily subversive, using the wide outdoors as our refuge and second home. We gathered in small and large groups in rock formations and outcrops, in trusted woods, behind secluded sheds.
At every school dance there would be almost a hundred kids out on the grounds participating in what we called 'field parties' where you'd see dozens of little circles of partiers lighting up every few seconds in the dark of night.
The circle was our thing, passing the bowl, joint, or bong around, most times with a bag or bowl of weed in the middle. We had all sorts of pipes and material that went with it that we bought from one of the TWO 'head shops' which sold pot paraphernalia in our suburban town.
One overtly pot oriented shop was called 'Good Stuff,' but you couldn't call pipes 'pot pipes' or 'bongs' if you wanted to purchase one. No age limit.
'Marco Polo' on Wisconsin Ave, was a head shop which was decked out like a gift shop. I bought my first two hits of acid for $5 there, right in the back where they were selling waterbeds. Hard to believe, even now at 63. (not a comforting endorsement of the culture, but it was what it was).
Anyway, with only a fraction of tales told (I may revisit this one day here), I wanted to give a shout out to my amazing Governor Wes Moore, who, yesterday, pardoned my family for all of our pot crimes and recognized us as part of Maryland's mainstream, again.
The Democratic governor signed an executive order during a State House ceremony, granting clemency to thousands of people convicted in Maryland. The convictions to be pardoned include more than 150,000 misdemeanors for simple possession and more than 18,000 for possession of drug paraphernalia with an intent to use.
https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/politics-power/state-government/wes-moore-cannabis-pardons-IRIBTAOU6BHRZBBZMO26HCPJYE/
This should be a very different summer for Maryland (I believe the overall crime numbers falling has a lot to do with legalization. I've always felt that would be so).
The terrorizing surrounding pot is over in my state, and hopefully legalization will be implemented nationwide by our Democratic president. I still feel a little PTSD; bending down low when I light up in my back yard, and feeling shady walking into the dispensary, but we've come so very far.
It's what we get when we elect Democrats to office, zeen?
= new reply since forum marked as read
...I do wonder if it will get even better, or will some folk's rotten nature to want to control people take over again?
So nice now, though (even though I'm sure I could get higher if they'd give us some better weed 
).
...looks like my house that morning.
The looks on their faces, before and after. 
...mostly for the pain relief it gives them.
I swear I must smoke so much that I don't seem to get as much out of the cannibis products and edibles, but it's been really great seeing them get some relief, and to see all of them move away from alcohol, replacing that habit with an occasional high.
It's going to take a while to feel normal though. It's hard to shake the stigma, especially since I don't know who actually snitched on us, lol! 
And congrats! That’s a heck of an ordeal and glad you all are on the other side of it.
...so surreal.
Having the pot war crumble in this town, right after we got busted, was pretty satisfying, despite the lingering feeling that we've really been had.
So much of the police state crumbled with legalization. Much less targeting people because they look like they're carrying. Both of my son's experienced forced searches of their bags by cops in my nice neighborhood in their younger years, just walking to work. It's just been wild, when you think about it.
I definitely need to write more on this, but Wes gave me this nudge with his pardons so I just spilled a bit of tea over it all. 