For years, crumbs of cannabis impacted a Maryland man's life. Now he sees a clearer future

For years, a few crumbs of cannabis played an outsized role in shaping Shiloh Jordan’s life.

With a stroke of a pen by Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Jordan looks forward to that being in the past for him — as well as tens of thousands of other Marylanders who have been pardoned for misdemeanor marijuana convictions.

“I just feel like this is a big opportunity for people, you know, to not let struggles get in their way,” Jordan, 32, said in an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, a day after he watched the governor sign an executive order for the sweeping pardon of more than 175,000 convictions.

Jordan was in his early 20s when he was pulled over in Howard County, Maryland, for not wearing a seatbelt on his way home from work as a custodian at a nursing home. The officer said she smelled marijuana, and using a piece of tape, she found cannabis crumbs on the floor of the vehicle, Jordan said.

“She was just like, ‘Yep, you’re going to jail,’” Jordan recalled of the incident from about a dozen years ago. “I’m like what? Are you serious?”

“But that was the law back then, so she took me to jail, locked me up,” Jordan said.

He said he didn’t think much of the minor charge — until his second day at a new job when he was let go because a background check had uncovered his misdemeanor conviction. It was disheartening, and it made him think about the myriad challenges facing young people growing up in poverty, all the things that so often stand in the way of them staying on the straight and narrow, Jordan said.

“I felt defeated,” he said. “I was just trying to, you know, do the right thing.”

He ended up participating in a job readiness program and later going back to school and playing football in college. He now works as