Can legalized cannabis help reduce Baltimore’s gun violence?

Saturday marks the legalization of adult recreational cannabis use in Maryland, and much attention will be paid — likely for weeks to come — about this historic change in state law and the challenges it poses to producers, regulators, families and law enforcement. Medicinal marijuana use was approved a decade ago in Maryland, but the march toward recreational legalization was slow, even as the state came to grips with its unusually high incarceration rate for cannabis possession (ranking fifth among states as recently as 2010), and the damage this had wrought, particularly on low-income predominantly Black communities.