Politics
Black People Accounted For 83% Of Last Year’s Increase In U.S. Marijuana Arrests, Report Shows
It has long been known that despite similar marijuana usage rates across races, cannabis criminalization is enforced in a racially disproportionate manner in the U.S.—with people of color being arrested at much higher rates than white people are.
Now, a new analysis shows that when marijuana arrests went up in 2025 compared to the prior year’s total, Black people accounted for 83 percent of the increase.
The data compiled by the criminal justice and immigration policy reform group FWD.us also shows that Black people made up nearly half (45 percent) of all cannabis arrests in the U.S. last year.
The organization’s new report, “Arresting Progress,” generally looks at how criminal justice reforms achieved in recent years have begun to roll back amid what it calls “supercharged law enforcement funding under the second Trump administration.”
“Arrests for drug possession rose for the first time in several years in 2025, signaling a return to the failed policies and enforcement approach at the height of the ‘war on drugs,'” the document said. “The increase includes a nearly 6% rise in arrests for marijuana possession, despite recreational or medical marijuana now being legal in 41 states.”
“Black Americans were arrested for marijuana possession at nearly five times the rate of white Americans, accounting for 83% of the overall national increase in marijuana arrests in 2025.”
Cannabis possession arrests in 2025 increased by more than 11,000 from the year prior, to 201,273, FWD.us said—”the first increase in at least a decade.”
The rise in cannabis busts is “concentrated in states that have not legalized marijuana, with 75% of the increase occurring in just eight southern states (Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Florida, North Carolina, and Arkansas),” the group said.
It also highlighted Washington, D.C., where marijuana arrests more than doubled in 2025 amid a Trump administration’s National Guard surge in the nation’s capital city.
When it comes to race, the report noted that despite similar usage rates, “Black people are arrested for marijuana possession at more than four times the rate (182 per 100,000) of white people (41 per 100,000).”
Cannabis arrests rose by nearly 10 percent for Black people in 2025, while they “remained stable” for other groups, it said. “This means that Black people accounted for 83% of the national increase in marijuana arrests in 2025 and nearly half of all marijuana arrests were of Black people (45%).”
Aside from marijuana, arrests for possession of other drugs also increased in 2025 by more than 15,000, with the report placing the blame “almost entirely” on the rollback of reforms such as Oregon’s now-repealed drug decriminalization law and the reversal of a provision of a California policy that reclassified simple drug possession from a felony to a misdemeanor.
“Like with the increase in marijuana possession arrests, the impact of these policy changes has been most acutely felt by Black people,” the report said, noting that drug possession busts increased by 8 percent in 2025 for Black people, compared to a 2 percent rise for white people.
“Despite decades of evidence showing that drug use rates are similar across racial groups and research demonstrating the harm caused by the ‘war on drugs’ in communities of color,” the report said, “arrests for drug possession continue to fall disproportionately on the communities who have long been subjected to the most extreme enforcement and surveillance tactics and the devastating consequences of mass incarceration.”
Zoë Towns, executive director of FWD.us, said in a press release about the new report that “we know what actually builds safe communities: housing, healthcare, and local violence prevention—not mass criminalization.
“Rolling back smart criminal justice reforms and supercharging low-level enforcement only ruins lives, deepens racial disparities, and drains taxpayer dollars,” she said. “It is time for federal, state, and local leaders to course-correct before we lock in another era of failed enforcement policies.”
