“It is clear that marijuana-related prosecutions still remain a primary driver of drug war enforcement in the United States.”
State and local law enforcement made over 200,000 marijuana possession arrests in 2025 — comprising approximately 23 percent of all drug arrests nationwide, according to data compiled by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and posted on its Crime Data Explorer website.
According to the online database, police made at least 218,152 total arrests for marijuana-related violations last year. (This total is an underestimate because approximately 13 percent of law enforcement agencies failed to report their arrest data to the FBI for 2025. The total also fails to calculate how many cannabis-related arrests are included in the tens of thousands of “unspecified drug abuse violations” reported by the FBI.)
Consistent with prior years, most of those arrested (92 percent) were charged with low-level marijuana possession. Specifically, police made 200,960 marijuana possession arrests in 2025. The other 17,192 marijuana-related arrests were defined as “sales/manufacturing.” Those totals are up from 2024, when police made approximately 204,000 marijuana-related arrests.
“While the number of marijuana-related arrests has trended downward for the better part of the past decade, in large part due to 24 states legalizing and regulating cannabis for adults, 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 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.”
He added: “The criminalization of cannabis and the prosecution of those who possess it and consume it is a terribly destructive policy that disrupts lives and has lasting consequences. Low-level marijuana offenders, many of them younger, poor, and people of color, should not be saddled with an arrest, a criminal record, and with the lifelong penalties and stigma associated with it for engaging in behavior that is legally regulated in nearly half the states in this country.”
Like in prior years, Texas leads the nation in marijuana-related arrests. Texas police made over 29,000 marijuana-related arrests in 2025, approximately 14 percent of the national total. Ninety-eight percent of those arrested for marijuana-related violations in Texas were charged with simple possession. Under Texas law, low-level cannabis possession is classified as a criminal misdemeanor, punishable by up to 180 days incarceration and a $2,000 fine.
Four other states reported more than 11,000 marijuana possession arrests in 2025: Georgia (11,238), North Carolina (11,830), Tennessee (11,194), and Wisconsin (11,470). By contrast, five states reported fewer than 100 marijuana possession arrests: Alaska (92), Maine (96), Montana (35), Rhode Island (99), and Vermont (16).
Overall, the FBI reported 858,852 arrests nationwide for drug-related offenses in 2025 – a three percent increase over the previous year.
Marijuana arrests peaked in the United States in 2007, when police made over 870,000 marijuana-related arrests. At that time, just under half (48 percent) of all drug-related arrests in the United States were for marijuana-related violations. (The FBI changed the way they collected and reported crime data in 2021 making it difficult to compare more recent datasets with those of prior years.)
Since the year 2000, police have made over 16 million marijuana-related arrests in the United States.
This brief was reprinted from NORML. You can read the original version here.
