Maryland Marijuana Bill Update: Will Gov. Martin O'Malley Legalize Pot?

Marijuana may become legal in Maryland, after a vote by the state's Democrat-controlled Senate. The bill, if signed, will allow Marylanders to use marijuana for medicinal purposes. The bill passed the state Senate with a resounding 42 to 4 margin.

Gov. Martin O'Malley, a progressive democrat, is expected to sign the bill upon its anticipated arrival on his desk in Annapolis. "I'd like to read it first, but I probably would," O'Malley said. Maryland's government will then reportedly introduce programs to distribute marijuana to seriously ill patients at various hospitals throughout the state.

Republican State Senator E.J. Pipkin of Elkton was one of the four who voted against the legalization of marijuana in Maryland. Pipkin said he wants the voters themselves to directly decide whether to approve such a bill, noting that he believes a comprehensive approach to the subject would serve Marylanders better than voting on individual aspects of marijuana legalization.

The outspoken leader of the leftist majority in Maryland, longtime Senate President Thomas "Mike" Miller, who has been at the post since 1987, said that Maryland has officially departed from its alleged previous geographic identity: "Are we the southern state we used to be? No we're not," Miller said, "Maryland does look liberal... That's good news to some, bad news to others." Maryland has indeed become increasingly progressive, with higher taxes and an overall expansion of government from Aberdeen to Waldorf. The "Washington Post" noted just how much different Maryland has become from its other southern counterparts like conservative Mississippi and the Carolinas. As the partial-year session of Congress comes to a close (Maryland's government does not convene year-round), bills on the eleventh-hour docket were said to include expansions of the illegal immigrant driver's license program, and "additional authority" over education for Rushern "Rush" Baker III, the Democratic county executive in Prince Georges County, which borders Washington, DC.

Maryland joins 20 other states that have at least some form of legalization of marijuana. To Miller's point, only Delaware and the District of Columbia share Maryland's likely title of southern jurisdictions that have considered pot legal in some quarters.