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Marijuana in handcuffs
Federal marijuana arrests have been reduced significantly as the cannabis legalization movement is continuing to spread, according to new data by the Department of Justice (DOJ).
In 2010, marijuana accounted for more arrests by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) than all other drugs with the sole exception of cocaine. Ten years later, in 2020, marijuana accounted for the least number of arrests, completely inverting the trend. “During that period, arrests declined an average of 11% for marijuana each year,” the DOJ’s report reads.
The report does not include the year 2021, during which there was an unexpected uptick in marijuana-related arrests and busts by the DEA, bringing the number of arrestees from less than 5,000 to 6,606. That year, the DEA’s enforcement zeal ran counter to all other metrics, which clearly show a rapid and consistent decrease in prohibition of cannabis.
The U.S. Sentencing Commission revealed that marijuana cases shrank quickly among federal drug cases, with less than 1,000 federal marijuana charges filed in 2021. The FBI’s arrest data shows a sharp decline in arrests for cannabis: Just between 2019 and 2020, cannabis-related arrests declined 36% throughout all of the United States and every level of law enforcement.
Interestingly, even after such a precipitous decline in arrests over a period of nearly 10 years, arrests for minor marijuana offenses, mainly simple possession of personal use amounts of weed, are still more numerous than arrests for all violent crimes combined.
Simple Possession
“The data from the FBI’s report revealed that police arrested 545,602 people for cannabis related crimes in 2019. That arrest rate is 9% higher than the 495,871 people arrested for violent crimes the same year,” Forbes reported. “And those being arrested for cannabis aren’t just those making money from selling, growing or manufacturing the drug—they are mostly just people who use cannabis. The vast majority of these arrests (92%) were for simple possession of the drug. 500,395 of those arrested for cannabis were simply found in possession of cannabis. Even if we take out all the arrests for being involved in unregulated cannabis commerce and just focus on arrests for cannabis possession, the numbers still outpace arrests for violent crimes.”
In Wisconsin, the trend is proving true, as well. Like the rest of the U.S., Wisconsin saw a modest uptick in arrests for possession of marijuana in 2021 following a clear downward trend. In 2017, more than 17,000 Wisconsinites were arrested for possession. Two years later, the Shepherd Express celebrated the fact that “only” 14,700 Wisconsinites had been arrested for simple possession, the lowest number since the 1990s. And after two more years, there were “only” 11,700 such arrests in 2021. The downward trend has proven reliable, and unwarranted arrests keep diminishing despite the best efforts of anti-weed regressives.
When he was elected, President Joe Biden stirred up fears among cannabis reform activists due to his refusal to support any form of legalization no matter how modest. Biden had been the only Democratic candidate to the presidency who did not endorse some form of cannabis legalization.
What Biden promised instead was the federal decriminalization of cannabis. He announced that “nobody should be in jail for smoking marijuana,” and his campaign promises explicitly include justice reform, the decriminalization of cannabis, the automatic expungement of all prior cannabis convictions, as well as cocaine reform and putting an end to all incarcerations for drug use. It’s interesting to note that the marijuana and cocaine reform promises are considered to be “for Black America” in the president’s platform, showing an understanding that unfair drug laws disproportionately impact non-white Americans.
Attempted Reform
Have those promises been kept? The Biden Administration certainly made attempts, notably with the MORE Act, a bill aiming to federally decriminalize marijuana and championed by Vice President Kamala Harris, which passed the House repeatedly but was killed in the Senate each time by obstructionist Republicans. However, Biden has not yet used any other lever of power to push legislation or executive orders to follow up on his campaign promises.
Under President Barack Obama, states’ rights to legalize marijuana were protected by the Cole Memorandum, a notice issued by the Department of Justice and which guaranteed that the federal government could not intervene with state-legal cannabis. The Cole Memorandum was rescinded by President Donald Trump’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions and was not reinstated by the current administration. However, Attorney General Merrick Garland signaled friendliness toward the memo. He did not make it official policy, but he announced that pursuing people who are complying with state laws is not worth the DOJ’s time or resources, effectively making the Cole Memorandum apply again, although with a less stable basis.
The biggest source of hope regarding the potential progressive measures we can expect is Biden’s drug czar, Rahul Gupta, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Before accessing his current position, Gupta worked in the cannabis industry, and he has signaled an understanding and willingness to work on the unique issues of cannabis prohibition.
Medical Marijuana
“In the case of chronic pain, cannabis can be efficacious,” Rahul Gupta said on record on Monday, June 27. It is notable, as the U.S. government had routinely denied the medical value of marijuana medicine before that. “The president has been clear about decriminalization ... It is clear the policies we have had in this country in regards to marijuana have not worked,” he added, before promising that the Biden Administration intends to “follow the science” regarding future cannabis reform.
Two weeks prior, during an interview with the Financial Times, Gupta had brought up the strategy of the Office of National Drug Control Policy to bide their time while observing the fallout of state-level policies where marijuana was legalized. “We are learning from those states ... we’re monitoring the data and trying to see where things go. But one thing is very clear, and the president has been clear about that: The policies that we’ve had around marijuana have not been working.
“For the first time in history, the federal government is embracing the specific policies of harm reduction,” Gupta said. Although it does not relate directly to marijuana—which is entirely harmless—it represents a massive shift for the U.S. government, which has so far violently repressed all forms of drug use. The Biden Administration has not yet lifted the existing ban on supervised injection sites where people with addictions can safely consume drugs, but Gupta has already announced that lifting this ban is on the table; and the administration allowed the opening of two still-illegal supervised injection sites in New York and defended their positive results. “We are literally trying to give users a lifeline,” said Xavier Becerra, Biden’s Secretary of Health and Human Services.
After one year and a half in power, Biden’s record with marijuana is moderately positive. Activists may deplore his lack of radical action, but his administration used soft levers of power to reduce the harm caused by the War on Drugs, be it on cannabis or harder drugs, thus complementing legal states’ efforts towards reform. Despite a rocky start, results are undeniable, and hundreds of thousands of Americans were spared unjust arrests for simple possession. If Gupta is to be believed, activists can expect the downward trend to continue and new reform proposals to be brought forth in the remainder of Biden’s term.
