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FBI Report: Over 200,000 cannabis arrests in 2024

Oct 21, 2025

cannabis arrests, FBI


FBI Report: Over 200,000 cannabis arrests in 2024

In October, the FBI released data showing that more than 200,000 people were arrested for cannabis offenses in 2024. Nearly 90% of them were for possession. And that number is likely a significant undercount, as many jurisdictions don’t share their data with the Bureau.

200,000 is almost 550 people every single day.
 
I saw that news and it was bouncing around my head when I attended the Last Prisoner Project’s 2025 Journey to Justice Gala in New York (LPP fills a deep room and throws a powerful event – highly recommend), where the speakers included multiple individuals who have recently been released from prison.

Pictured: Jason Ortiz (Director of Strategic Initiatives, Last Prisoner Project), Adam J. Smith (Exec. Director, MPP), Ethan Nadelmann (Drug Policy Reform Legend), and Jessica Gonzalez (Superstar International Cannabis Attorney).
— Pictured: Jason Ortiz (Director of Strategic Initiatives, Last Prisoner Project), Adam J. Smith (Exec. Director, MPP), Ethan Nadelmann (Drug Policy Reform Legend), and Jessica Gonzalez (Superstar International Cannabis Attorney).

José Sepulveda spent nearly 30 years inside before being pardoned by President Biden in January. At the end of his trial, the jury recommended five years for his part in a larger cannabis conspiracy. The judge ignored that and sentenced José to life. Life. For a non-violent cannabis offense. 
 
He described missing his daughter’s wedding, his father’s funeral, and the prime of his life. But most of all, he described the hopelessness — his own, and all around him — of so many years, and the pointlessness of destroying the lives of people who were not actually hurting anyone and calling it justice. José was rescued from hopelessness when LPP found him and wrapped around him (as they do with their constituents) and connected him with a pro bono attorney who fought for and won his clemency. After thirty years.
 
Deshaun Durham was 18 with no previous arrests when a judge sentenced him to eight years for a non-violent cannabis offense. He shared the feeling of having “disappeared” from the outside world. Forgotten. 
 
Of his Kansas prison, he told us, “It was unbelievably hot in there. And the facility was infested with bed bugs. Just totally infested. There was nothing you could do to get away from them.” He talked about being stuck in that infested cell for 23 hours a day when he wasn’t doing backbreaking work for $20 a month. 
 
His mom was the only one who stuck with him. Her voice — when they were able to speak — and her love were all he had. “For three years that I thought was going to be eight, I was in hell. That’s the only way I can describe it. Hell.” 
 
This country has spent too many generations locking up people for cannabis — and seriously disrupting the lives of those who don’t ever serve time — often costing them their jobs, children, housing, or a hoped-for future.
 
At MPP, we’ve been working for decades to change that. And it is changing. But not everywhere. Every day in America, still, more than 550 lives are disrupted (and worse) for cannabis.
 
Locking 18-year-old kids — or anyone else — in cages within cruel and often hellish conditions for years or decades (or at all) for possessing a plant, or even for filling the economic vacuum that prohibition so predictably creates, is not justice. It’s dark, and sick, and barbaric, and it always has been. 
 
It’s way past time that we put the brutal and shameful era of cannabis prohibition behind us. Everywhere and forever.

 

Adam J. Smith
Executive Director
Marijuana Policy Project