Even as more states continue to legalize marijuana, new FBI data shows that at least 200,000 people were arrested over cannabis in 2023—and simple possession again made up the vast majority of those cases. Those figures are likely understated, however, given inconsistencies in the federal data and ongoing questions about the agency’s methodology.

At a time when the public and both major party presidential nominees find themselves aligned in their opposition to criminalizing people over low-level marijuana offenses, advocates say the federal data released on Monday further underscores the need to urgently change course.

The 2023 data, according to FBI, comes from more than 14 million criminal offenses reported to the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, which is submitted by over 16,000 state, local and tribal agencies whose jurisdictions comprise more than 94 percent of the country’s population. That’s slightly more data coverage compared to the FBI’s crime report from the prior year.

Because not all agencies provide data for the complete 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 “drug/narcotic,” for example, FBI said there were 879,118 arrests.

Those numbers, however, aren’t consistent throughout the FBI report. In a section on arrests by region, FBI said there were 746,292 total drug arrests in 2023. In a separate analysis of  historical trends, meanwhile, FBI reported just 635,066 drug arrests last year. Another section on racial breakdowns says there were 726,623 drug abuse violations.

The agency further reported that there were 1,544,907 crimes involving a person’s suspected use of drugs other than alcohol in 2023.

Using the agency’s estimated numbers, the 870,874 arrests for drug abuse violations account for about 12 percent of the approximately 7.5 million estimated arrests nationwide in 2023, according to one section of the report.

Of all total drug-related arrests in the new report, FBI said, 23 percent were for marijuana possession—more than for possession of any other listed substance. Arrests for selling or manufacturing cannabis, meanwhile, made up 2 percent of total drug arrests.

According to the data, 200,306 estimated arrests occurred for marijuana possession and another 16,844 estimated arrests were for cannabis sales or manufacturing in 2023. The numbers are down from 2022, but advocates say the continued criminalization at the current scale remains unacceptable, especially in the face of growing public consensus in favor of legalization.

At the same time, frustrations over FBI’s inconsistent data reporting on cannabis and other drug arrest trends have persisted.

In terms of controlled substances seized in 2023, there were 417,661 marijuana seizures out of 1,058,537 total drug seizures, representing about 39 percent of actions.

One part of the FBI report discusses trends over time, showing that there were 1,113,032 drug offenses charged in 2014 and 635,066 drug offenses charged in 2023—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.

Arrests of Black people made up about 29 percent of drug arrests in 2023, FBI reported—a disproportionate number given that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 13.6 percent of Americans are Black. Meanwhile, nearly 69 percent of drug arrests were of white people, 1.6 percent were people who identified as American Indian or Alaska Native, about 1.1 percent were Asian American and about 0.2 percent were Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander.

“While there has clearly been a longterm decline in the total number of marijuana-related arrests nationwide, it is discouraging that there still remains significant gaps in the available information,” NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano said. “At a time when voters and their elected officials nationwide are re-evaluating state and federal marijuana policies, it is inconceivable that government agencies are unable to produce more explicit data on the estimated costs and scope of marijuana prohibition in America.”

“Nonetheless, even from this incomplete data set, it remains clear that marijuana-related prosecutions remain a primary driver of drug war enforcement in the United States,” he said. “Hundreds of thousands of Americans continue to be arrested annually for low-level cannabis-related violations even though a majority of voters no longer believe that the responsible use of marijuana by adults should be a crime.”

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.

Last year—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.

The delay, Sterling told Marijuana Moment in a phone interview at the time, suggests DOJ’s own investigators are “overwhelmed and not able to process the incoming complaints in any kind of timely manner, and the ability to respond to much more serious instances of misconduct is compromised.”

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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