According to a new report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, marijuana arrests will account for nearly a third of drug arrests across the United States. Inconsistencies and changes in methodology have made it difficult, as with the report from last year, to make meaningful comparisons between years or to draw any meaningful conclusions about cannabis enforcement and trends.
According to FBI, the data comes from over 11 million criminal offenses that were reported to the Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR). This program is administered by 13,293 agencies of law enforcement and 2,431 agencies with jurisdictions covering more than 90% of the population.
In a press announcement on its 2022 annual Crime in the Country statistics, the Bureau stated that “Of 18,884 state and county agencies, universities and colleges, as well as tribal agencies, were eligible to participate in UCR Program. 15,724 agencies provided data in 2022.”
The FBI explained that because not all agencies provided data for complete reporting periods in its methodology section, it calculates estimated crimes, essentially “by following an estimation procedure using data provided.” For example, FBI reported 766,595 total arrests for drug abuse violations. Estimated arrests for drug-abuse violations are 907,958.
These numbers are not consistent across the FBI report. In the section of arrests by regions, FBI reported that there were 726.746 drug arrests total in 2022, which is nearly 40,000 less than their top-level figure. FBI, however, reported only 633,576 arrests for drugs in 2022, according to an analysis of historical patterns. In a section that breaks down drug abuse by race, there are 714 442 violations.
In other sections, “drug/narcotic crimes” are listed at 1,459 460 for the year, as well as the number of arrestees and total of drug/narcotic offenders, which is 1,755,788. In 2022, the agency said that 902,482 crimes involved a person suspected of using drugs other than alcohol.
The FBI’s Press Office did not respond immediately to an email sent by Marijuana Moment asking for clarification of the contradictory numbers.
According to a section of the report, the 907 958 arrests made for drug violations represent about 12 percent out of the 7.4 million arrests expected in the United States by 2022. In 2020, the last year the agency used the previous methodology, there were 1155,610 estimated arrests for drug use violations.
The FBI reported that of all drug arrests, more than 27 percent involved marijuana possession. This is higher than any other substance listed. The arrests of people for manufacturing or selling cannabis accounted for 2.5 percent of all drug arrests.
According to the data in 2022, 245149 arrests are estimated for marijuana possession. Another 22 699 arrests are estimated for cannabis manufacturing or sales. According to another section of the FBI’s report, there were 208.192 arrests in 2017 for marijuana possession. There were also 18,916 arrests for cannabis sales.
Out of the 992,506 total drug seizures, 435,333 were marijuana seizures. This represents about 44 percent.
The FBI report includes a tab that shows trends over time. It shows there were 1,076,547 charges of drug offenses in 2013, and 633,576 in 2022. This is a 41 percent reduction, although it’s unclear how much of this change was due to the new method of reporting arrests.
FBI reported that arrests of Blacks accounted for about 27 percent in 2022. This is a high number, given the fact that according to U.S. Census Bureau about 13.6 percent are Black. Nearly 70 percent of arrests for drug offenses involved white people. About 1.6 percent of those arrested were American Indians or Alaska Natives, while about 1 percent identified themselves as Asian Americans.
Paul Armentano is the deputy director of NORML. He said that the data clearly shows a decrease in the number of arrests for marijuana over time. However, he found it “disappointing” that there are still significant gaps in information.
He said: “At a moment when voters and elected officials are reevaluating state and federal marijuana policy, it’s inconceivable that the government is unable to provide more explicit data about the estimated costs and extent of marijuana prohibition in America.”
The FBI’s arrest statistics are widely used by legislators, researchers and the media to contextualize and understand law enforcement trends. Inconsistencies can affect not only the public’s perception of crime and law-enforcement, but also how policies are crafted and implemented.
Armentano stated that “even with this incomplete data set it is clear that marijuana seizures remain the primary driver for drug war enforcement” in the United States. “Hundreds of thousands” of Americans are arrested every year for these violations, even though the majority of voters do not believe that marijuana use by adults is a crime.
In May 2022, a former congressional staffer and long-time drug reformer, Eric Sterling claimed that he had discovered that the Maryland police department was submitting cannabis possession citations under the state’s decriminalization laws at the time, as arrests, as part of an FBI data sharing partnership.
Sterling argued that the fact that other state and local agencies do not appear to report cannabis citations in the same way as arrests could have a significant impact on the FBI’s annual reports, making it difficult to draw reasonable conclusions about policy from the data.
The office responded in August, about 14 months after Sterling’s inquiry. The Office of the Inspector General (DOJ), investigations division, instead of addressing the apparent problem, said that it “determined that the issues that you raised would be better reviewed by another office within the DOJ”, and sent the inquiry to the FBI’s inspection division.
Sterling, in a phone conversation with Marijuana Moment at the time said that the DOJ’s investigators were “overwhelmed” and “unable to process incoming complaints quickly, and their ability to respond in serious cases of misconduct has been compromised.”
A spokesperson from the Office of the Inspector General of the DOJ declined to comment, and referred Marijuana Moment “to the FBI” for any additional questions about this topic. FBI did not comment.
The FBI’s reporting on cannabis enforcement is also compromised because local and state law enforcement are not required by federal regulations to share information with the FBI to produce its annual report. This means that provides an incomplete picture of national law enforcement activity. According to the agency, certain data might not be comparable with previous years due to different levels of participation.
The FBI has been criticized for its reporting, but recent trends still seem to be in line with what was expected. In fact, the agency shows that cannabis arrests have declined over the past few years, as more states are moving towards legalization.
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), also says that it made fewer arrests for marijuana in 2022 even though the number of cannabis plants eradicated by the agency grew.
In January, federal data released by Customs and Border Protection indicate that marijuana seizures reached a new low for Fiscal Year 2022.
A Report from the Government Accountability Office, released last year, also gives a better picture of those who are caught up in enforcement. Agents at checkpoints in the United States are more likely to seize small amounts of marijuana than large shipments coming from international cartels.
In line with and other federal reports the analysis of last year showed that cannabis seizures have declined significantly at checkpoints since 2016. Border Patrol seized 70 058 pounds at checkpoints of marijuana in 2016, compared to only 30,828 pounds by 2020.
In a report published last year, Congressional Research Service stated that the combined efforts of international reform and state-level legalization have reduced demand from Mexico for illicit marijuana. has been cited by Congressional legislators in recent times to describe the impact that legalization can have on transnational cartel operations.
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