By Arrests Concentrated in Ten States
A new analysis of FBI data reveals that ten states accounted for the majority of U.S. marijuana arrests last year. Police in Texas, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Georgia, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Indiana, Louisiana, and Alabama carried out more than 131,000 marijuana arrests in 2025.
The federal report indicates that more than 200,000 people were arrested for marijuana-related offenses in the United States last year. Texas alone saw more than 29,000 cannabis arrests, which accounted for about 14 percent of the nation’s marijuana busts. In that state, 98 percent of those arrests were for possession alone.
North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Wisconsin each reported more than 12,000 marijuana arrests last year. In all five of these states, 90 percent or more of the arrests were for possession only. The data highlights a significant geographic disparity in law enforcement activity across the country.
Geography Determines Legal Risk
NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano stated that the threat of arrest for cannabis possession largely comes down to geography. He noted that in nearly half the states in this country, low-level marijuana arrests have fallen nearly to zero. Elsewhere in America, police continue to disrupt hundreds of thousands of lives and waste countless tax dollars and prosecutorial resources on activities that most Americans no longer believe ought to be a crime and that, throughout much of the United States, no longer is.
Louisiana had the highest percent of total drug arrests accounted for by cannabis possession, at 62 percent. The state’s governor recently signed legislation that threatens to send people to jail for up to one year if they smoke marijuana within 2,000 feet of a school property. This includes college campuses, expanding the scope of potential enforcement actions in the region.
Marijuana arrests have generally decreased significantly in states that have legalized cannabis. However, some jurisdictions that have enacted the reform continue to see significant numbers of marijuana busts. Illinois police reported 5,731 cannabis possession arrests last year, while Washington, D.C.
police carried out 1,336 such busts.
Data Limitations and Trends
The overall FBI report likely understates the true number of people busted for marijuana. This is due to inconsistencies in the federal data and questions about the agency’s changing methodology from recent years. Additionally, about 13 percent of state and local law enforcement agencies did not contribute information for 2025.
Cannabis-related offenses increased year over year, jumping to 200,960 marijuana possession busts in 2025 from 187,792 in the year prior. Sales or manufacturing arrests also rose to 17,192 from 16,244 in 2024. All told, marijuana busts accounted for a quarter of all drug arrests in 2025, more than for any other specifically listed substance.
Despite the uptick from 2024 to 2025, advocates note that busts have been trending overall downward in recent years. They attribute this long-term decline largely to the success of the expanding state-level legalization movement. The FBI calculates estimated crime numbers by following a standard estimation procedure using the data provided by participating agencies.
