INSIGHTS BLOG > Cannabis Arrests: Pre- vs. Post-Legalization

NORML reports state level data on number of arrests for possession and sale of cannabis annually between 2018 and 2023.^[1] After conducting some preliminary analyses and trying to make sense of the information – but to no avail – I decided to divide states into 4 categories based on the timing of cannabis legalization: 

• The state legalized adult use before 2018,
• Adult use became legal in the state between 2018 and 2023,
• The state has only legalized medical use, and 
• The state has not legalized either medical or adult use. 

to see if this categorization resulted in any patterns.

Patterns in Arrests

In most states, the vast majority of arrests (80%+) were for possession, rather than sales. The portions of arrests for possession were slightly lower in states that legalized adult use before 2018, 80% - 81%, relative to those in states that legalized adult use during the period, 87% - 88%, which, in turn, were slightly lower than those for states that had not legalized adult use cannabis, 90% - 92% (Figure 1).

Figure 1

There are two patterns of note here: differences in percentages of arrests for possession vs. sale and differences in percentages between legal and non-legal states.

Possession vs. Sale: Arrests for possession presumably dominate due to the higher prevalence of users than sellers, the ease of detecting possession relative to establishing sales, and the lower evidentiary thresholds needed in court to prove possession relative to sales. In short, while sales are more serious, they’re harder to convict.

Legal vs. Non-Legal States: States that have legalized adult use have fewer possession arrests presumably because legalization generally involves decriminalization of possession. In this case, unlicensed possession becomes a low penalty crime, and law enforcement shifts its focus from possession to sales. Non-legal states, on the other hand, continue to focus more on enforcing possession.

2018 – 2023 Changes in Number and Rates of Arrests

Patterns in numbers and rates of arrests also differed across the four groups of states (Figures 2 – 5). 

Adult Use Legal before 2018: States that had legalized adult use cannabis before 2018 had low arrest rates in 2018 (0.03% of the population), presumably because they had already decreased cannabis arrests at the time they legalized cannabis, that is, before 2018. Yet, between 2018 and 2023, the number of arrests in these already legal states continued to drop substantially (55% drop), from 0.03% in 2018 to 0.01% in 2023. 

Adult Use Legal between 2018 and 2023. States that legalized adult use cannabis sometime during the study period showed the overall largest drops in cannabis arrests during the period. The number of arrest dropped by 90% overall, from 0.25% of the population in 2018 to 0.03% in 2023. States that legalized later during the period had slightly higher arrest rates than those that legalized earlier on (see Figure 5).

Medical Only States. States that legalized medical cannabis at some point (before or during the period) but not adult use had similar arrest rates in 2018 (0.27% of the population) as states that legalized adult use during the period (0.25%), but they experienced smaller drops in number of arrests between 2018 and 2023 (49% drop vs. 90% drop), leading them to have higher arrest rates at the end of the period than those in the newly legal states (0.14% vs. 0.03%). There’s a clear relationship indicating that states that legalized cannabis later (i.e., more recently) had higher arrest rates (Figure 5).

Cannabis Not Legal. States that had not legalized either medical or adult use cannabis by 2023 had lower drops in numbers of arrests (33% between 2018 and 2023) and higher arrest rates at the beginning (34% of the population) and end (22%) of the period.

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

Figure 5

Costs of Cannabis Arrests

The takeaway here is that after states legalize cannabis activity, arrest rates for cannabis sales and possession plummet, from roughly 0.34% of the population (the 2023 average in states that have not legalized either medical or adult use) to roughly 0.01% - 0.03% (the 2023 average in states that have legalized both medical and adult use). 

If states that have not yet legalized adult use cannabis did so, arrests could drop — very conservatively — from roughly 250,000 arrests down to roughly 25,000 arrests, a difference of 225,000 arrests annually, saving state and local governments roughly $2.6 billion annually (Figure 6).

Figure 6

These savings in governments’ costs of enforcement don’t include government savings at the national level (i.e., DEA enforcement), and they don’t include the savings to individuals from not being arrested or prosecuted for cannabis crimes. The latter human rights savings include such benefits as job security, freedom from fear of prosecution, the maintenance of intact families and communities, and the ability of legal market participants to develop a sense of dignity, legitimacy, and pride in being productive members of society. 

References

^[1] Total arrests were adjusted upward to account for incomplete reporting by state law enforcement agencies reporting arrest data.