A growing number of states have legalized or decriminalized the possession of small amounts of marijuana. But the drug remains illegal in other states and under federal law – and police officers in the United States still make more arrests for marijuana offenses than for any other drug, according to FBI data.
Police officers made about 663,000 arrests for marijuana-related offenses in the 50 states and the District of Columbia in 2018, amounting to 40% of the 1.65 million total drug arrests in the U.S. that year (the most recent for which data is available). The second-largest category of drug arrests involved “other” drugs (29%), followed by heroin, cocaine or their derivatives (25%) and synthetic or manufactured drugs (6%). These figures include arrests for possessing, selling or manufacturing each kind of drug. They are based on information submitted to the FBI from thousands of state and local law enforcement agencies, which make the vast majority of arrests in the U.S. each year.
It’s difficult to assess changes in the number of marijuana arrests over time because the list of state and local police agencies that submit arrest data to the FBI is not identical from year to year. But as a share of all reported drug arrests in the U.S., marijuana arrests have decreased in the last decade and are now at their lowest level in at least 20 years, down from 52% of all drug arrests in 2010.