More Than 200,000 People Were Arrested For Marijuana In The U.S. Last Year, FBI Data Shows

Nearly 188,000 people were arrested over marijuana possession in the U.S.
last year, according to the FBI’s latest annual crime report, and another
16,000 were booked for allegedly selling or growing cannabis. However,
those figures are likely understated given inconsistencies in the federal
data and questions about the agency’s methodology.

The full 2024 data set is based on more than 14 million criminal offenses
reported to the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, which is used to
document and analyze national crime trends. The report covers 95.6 percent
of the U.S. population, FBI said.

This latest data does show that cannabis-related offenses fell slightly
compared to 2023, dropping from 200,306 possession busts to 187,792 in 2024
and from 16,844 sales or manufacturing arrests to 16,244.

Advocates see the reduction as a reflection of the success of the expanding
state-level legalization movement, but they also point out that marijuana
is still the illegal substance that Americans are most arrested for
possessing in the ongoing “war on drugs.”

“While the total number of marijuana-related arrests have fallen nationwide
in recent years, it is clear that marijuana-related prosecutions still
remain a primary driver of drug war enforcement in the United States,”
NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano told Marijuana Moment.

Of all drug possession arrests in the new report 27 percent were for
marijuana—more than for any other specifically listed substance.

Because not all agencies provide complete data for the reporting periods,
FBI has explained that the bureau calculates estimated crime numbers,
essentially extrapolating “by following a standard estimation procedure
using the data provided.” In terms of total reported arrests for a category
labelled “drug/narcotic,” for example, FBI said there were 831,446 arrests.

At the same time, frustrations over FBI’s inconsistent data reporting on
cannabis and other drug arrest trends have persisted. Various sections of
the report provide different numbers for seemingly similar categories of
offenses.

One FBI table says that there were 1,413,223 “Drug/Narcotic Offenses” in
2024. Another uses the figure for 1,577,175 under the same heading. A third
puts the total at 1,870,804.

Another section says there were 822,488 arrests for drug abuse violations
in 2024, accounting for about 12 percent of the approximately 7.5 million
estimated arrests nationwide.

The FBI data also shows trends over time, indicating that there were
1,055,013 drug offenses charged in 2015 and 600,400 drug offenses charged
in 2024—a reduction of about 43 percent, though it’s not clear how much of
the change is due to the agency’s shifting methodology for reporting
arrests and how much is due to actual changes in enforcement practices and
state drug laws over the past decade.

In terms of controlled substances seized in 2024, the agency said were
386,540 marijuana seizures out of 1,072,704 total drug seizures,
representing about 36 percent of enforcement actions.

FBI’s arrest data is widely relied on by lawmakers, researchers and media
to understand and contextualize law enforcement trends. Any inconsistencies
influence not just the public’s understanding of crime and law enforcement,
but also potentially how policy is crafted and implemented.

Apparent errors in FBI marijuana were pointed out to the bureau in May
2022, when a longtime drug reformer and former congressional staffer, Eric
Sterling, claimed to have discovered that a Maryland police department was reporting
cannabis possession citations issued under the state’s decriminalization
law at the time as arrests as part of a data-sharing partnership with FBI.

Since other state and local law enforcement agencies appear to not be
reporting cannabis citations as arrests, Sterling reasoned, the
inconsistent practice could significantly alter FBI’s annual reports—making
it harder to draw reasonable policy conclusions from the data.

In 2023—about 14 months after Sterling sent the inquiry—the office finally
replied. Rather than address the apparent problem, however, the Department
of Justice’s (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General’s investigations
division said it had “determined that the matters that you raised are more
appropriate for review by another office within the DOJ” and referred the
inquiry to FBI’s own inspection division.

FBI’s cannabis enforcement reporting is also compromised by the fact that
local and state police are not required to share data to inform the
agency’s annual report, meaning it offers an incomplete overview of
national law enforcement activities. The agency itself says that certain
data may not be comparable to previous years because of different levels of
participation over time.


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Meanwhile, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) said in a recent
filing that the marijuana rescheduling process remains stalled at the stage
it has been on for months, despite the head of agency’s prior commitment to
senators that he would prioritize the issue if confirmed for the role.

President Donald Trump said in August that he intended to make a decision
on the proposal to move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III of the
Controlled Substances Act (CSA) within weeks.

Rescheduling would not federally legalize marijuana, however, so it remains
to be seen how such a reform might impact arrest rates included in the
FBI’s future annual reports.

The post More Than 200,000 People Were Arrested For Marijuana In The U.S.
Last Year, FBI Data Shows appeared first on Marijuana Moment.