Drink aisles at Giant supermarkets across the state will have more options from Greater Baltimore after one Towson company completes a major expansion. ZenJoy, a drink company based at the StarTUp at the Armory accelerator, is launching a partnership with Giant in April. The deal will put its product in 145 stores in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. ZenJoy’s young trio of founders already sell their products in 385 convenience stores, restaurants, and other small retailers, but believe this deal can offer a template for expanding into supermarkets.

In the complicated landscape of health care, one thing is abundantly clear — the current drug pricing system is broken. It’s a sentiment echoed by patients, health care providers, insurers, pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), manufacturers, and researchers alike. The system, as it stands, fails to serve anyone’s interests adequately, least of all the patients who bear the brunt of its shortcomings at the pharmacy counter.

When Dr. Candice Peters woke up Friday morning, she still couldn’t believe she was one step closer to owning a cannabis business in Maryland. Her lingering surprise made her double check her lottery number against the one she saw chosen for a dispensary license. Hers was one of 179 selected at random by the Maryland Cannabis Administration on Thursday during a livestreamed event.

Right now, during Maryland’s 2024 legislative session, the state has multiple opportunities to improve insurance coverage and access to substance use and mental health care for individuals and families across the state. With more than 2,500Marylanders lost to overdose in 2023 alone, 922,000 individuals in the state age 12 and older documented as having a substance use disorder, and another 1,089,000 struggling with mental illness, the urgency is clear. We must act to save lives now!

The hunger rising in Maryland could be lessened by bills in the General Assembly that would increase food stamps and make school meals free. Senate Bill 35/House Bill 666 would increase the minimum monthly Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefit, also known as food stamps, from as low as $23 to $95 for 74,000 households. Senate Bill 579/House Bill 696 would provide universal free school meals in the state’s public schools.

Maryland House Democratic leaders unveiled plans Friday to balance the state budget with a $1.2 billion push to raise taxes, tolls and fees. House Democratic leaders contend it’s time to resolve the ongoing budget deficit and fund the state’s priorities, including education and transportation. “We are not going to balance our budget without a serious conversation about revenues,” said House Speaker Adrienne Jones, D-District 10.

A state lawmaker who represents Baltimore City and oversees K-12 education funding said she wants her colleagues to visit Baltimore City Public Schools campuses to see the conditions of the buildings. Baltimore City Delegate Stephanie Smith, D-District 45, agrees that the issue is funding and said some people need to see it to believe it. “I just think we have to continue to make the case to our colleagues that our students are going to schools they wouldn’t even want their pets to enter,” Smith told 11 News Investigates.

Maryland would create a new center to foster a statewide partnership with federal and local agencies to reduce gun violence, under a bill approved by the state Senate on Thursday. The measure, proposed by Gov. Wes Moore, would put the Center for Firearm Violence Prevention in the state health department to implement a public health approach to reducing firearms violence. The bill, approved on a 35-11 vote, now goes to the Maryland House, where a similar bill has been introduced.

I feel compelled to rebut several misrepresentations made by Mark Case, BGE’s vice president of regulatory policy, in a recent article, “Electrification will strain Maryland’s grid. The question is by how much,” published in The Daily Record’s March 11, 2024, edition. The story references a BGE study that anticipates that electrification will significantly increase the average load growth rate as compared to a much lower grid impact in the Maryland Public Service Commission’s electrification study.

She was born and raised on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to “a family who was about service.” Major Gen. Janeen Birckhead is the 31st Adjutant General for the state of Maryland and is currently the only Black woman in the country to lead a state military. “I have been fortunate in my positions along the way to really be in good units with good mentors and leaders who have been able to give me some really good guidance about what steps to take next and where to go,” Birckhead told WTOP.