The FBI doesn’t know how many marijuana arrests were made in 2021 — and it’s their own goddamn fault

Today, October 5, the FBI released its annual 2021 Crime in the Nation Report, which aims to provide lawmakers and citizens alike with an accurate picture of arrest data across the country.

But this year the numbers are anything but clear.

Because 2021 was the first year in which the agency made a complete transition from its long-standing data collection system – the Uniform Crime Report – to the brand new National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS).

Unfortunately, according to CNN’s Priya Krishnakumar, NIBRS “requires more detail (and effort) in reporting crimes, which the FBI says has lowered participation rates.”

As a result, agencies representing more than a third of the country’s population — including the NYPD and LAPD — didn’t provide all of their data. Only half of the agencies provided figures for a full year.

As a result, according to Krishnakumar, “the 2021 report relies heavily on estimates for their national numbers.”

Local cops just stopped sending their details to the FBI

The annual FBI dataset has typically provided some insight into national trends in marijuana arrests. But not this year.

“At a time when voters and their elected officials across the country are reassessing state and federal marijuana policies, it is unthinkable that government agencies would not provide explicit data on the estimated cost and scope of America’s marijuana prohibition NORML Associate Director Paul Armentano said in a statement released today.

“Nevertheless, from the limited data available, it is clear that marijuana seizures and prosecutions remain the primary driver of enforcement of the drug war in the United States, and that hundreds of thousands of Americans, despite the fact that a majority of them continue to be arrested annually because of these Voters no longer believe that adult use of marijuana should be a crime,” Armentano added.

Get some value from the data

Despite the mess they’ve been handed, we want to salute Armentano’s colleagues at NORML, who have collated the numbers – albeit a grossly incomplete set of them – to come up with some notable conclusions about drug-related arrests in the United States to draw in the past year:

• In the past year, law enforcement agencies have made just over 400,000 seizures of cannabis and hash — 45% of all drug seizures.
• This made cannabis the most commonly seized drug in the United States in 2021.
• Police made at least 170,856 marijuana-related arrests in 2021. NORML suspects the actual number is much higher.
• Texas led the nation for most marijuana-related prosecutions and arrests.

Despite the chaotic nature of the data, we can nonetheless conclude that arrest rates for cannabis in the United States in general have continued to decline since peaking at over 800,000 arrests in 2008. As reported by Leafly, arrest rates fell by a staggering 36% in 2020 alone.

Let’s hope this course continues and that we can all have more confidence in the numbers next year.

Max Savage Levenson

Max Savage Levenson probably has the lowest cannabis tolerance of any author on the cannabis beat. He also writes about music for Pitchfork, Bandcamp and other bespectacled people. He is the co-host of the Hash podcast. His dream interview is Tyler the Creator.

Check out Max Savage Levenson’s articles

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