The Trump administration's lethal campaign against "drug boats" is back, marijuana arrests topped 200,000 last year, and more. 

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Marijuana Policy

More Than 200,000 People Arrested for Pot Possession Last Year. The FBI has released its annual crime report, and it shows that more than 200,000 people were arrested for simple marijuana possession last year. Another 17,000 faced charges for growing or selling marijuana.

These are most likely lowball figures, given inconsistencies in federal data and that about 13 percent of law enforcement agencies did not provide data for the report. 

The data shows 200,960 marijuana possession arrests last year, up from 187,792 in 2024. Similarly, marijuana sales or manufacturing arrests jumped from 16,244 in 2024 to 17,192 last year. 

While still outrageously high, the figures pale in comparison with figures from before roughly half the country legalized weed. Pot arrests peaked at more than 870,000 in 2007.

Marijuana arrests accounted for one quarter of all drug arrests last year. 

"While the number of marijuana-related arrests has trended downward for the better part of the past decade, in large part due to 24 states legalizing and regulating cannabis for adults, it is clear that marijuana-related prosecutions still remain a primary driver of drug war enforcement in the United States," Paul Armentano, deputy director for NORML, told Marijuana Moment. "Hundreds of thousands of Americans continue to be arrested annually for low-level cannabis-related violations even though a majority of voters no longer believe that the responsible use of marijuana by adults should be a crime."

"The criminalization of cannabis and the prosecution of those who possess it and consume it is a terribly destructive policy that disrupts lives and has lasting consequences," he said. "Low-level marijuana offenders, many of them younger, poor and people of color, should not be saddled with an arrest, a criminal record and with the lifelong penalties and stigma associated with it for engaging in behavior that is legally regulated in nearly half the states in this country."

Opiates and Opioids

Despite Continued Drug War, Opioid Highs Are 90 Percent Cheaper Than 20 Years Ago. The price of an opioid high on the street has fallen by 90 percent in the past two decades, according to The New York Times. The $10 bill that bought a baggie of heroin in 2004 now buys five fentanyl tablets that are the opioid equivalent of 20 baggies of heroin. 

The numbers call into question the resort to supply reduction as a foundation of American drug control policy. The idea was that reducing supply would raise prices and make illicit drugs too expensive. "A key way we measured success was getting the price up," Robert DuPont, who served as White House drug czar from 1973 to 1977, told The Times. "It meant we got the job done."

The street price of heroin declined by more than half from the 1970s to early 2000s, and since then, the price of an opioid high has dropped even more dramatically. 

Opiates like heroin, which are derived from poppy plants, require extensive land for cultivation and intensive labor for harvesting and processing, but synthetic opioids are far cheaper and more efficient to produce. The inexorable logic of drug prohibition has pushed suppliers to constantly seek new, more efficient means of producing more potent illicit substances; the result is the kind of price decline we are seeing now. 

Bipartisan Bill Targets China's Role in Fentanyl Crisis. On Monday, Reps. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) and Dan Newhouse (R-WA), alongside House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman John Moolenaar (R-MI) and Ranking Member Ro Khanna (D-CA), reintroduced the CCP Fentanyl Sanctions Act "to hold the Chinese Communist Party responsible for its role in the US fentanyl crisis, according to a press release from Auchincloss's office. 

The CCP Fentanyl Sanctions Act strengthens sanctions on China-based and CCP-backed entities engaged in drug trafficking by targeting the Chinese chemical manufacturers and online vendors that are profiting by poisoning the American people.

The CCP Fentanyl Sanctions Act would address fentanyl exports from China by:

• Targeting the "Achilles’ heel" of fentanyl and related synthetic narcotics producers—their exposure to the US banking system courtesy of their licit activity;
• Codifying important new authorities to address this threat while working to target those responsible for the epidemic;
• Codifying and building on Executive Order 14059, which established critical new sanctions authorities against actors involved in fentanyl trafficking;
• Expanding existing sanctions authorities to target PRC vessels or ports that knowingly or recklessly facilitate shipment/transportation of illicit synthetic narcotics, as well as PRC online marketplaces and other entities that knowingly or recklessly facilitate sale of illicit synthetic narcotics;
• Providing authority to restrict foreign financial institution correspondent accounts and payable-through accounts if the President determines the account has knowingly facilitated transactions on behalf of individuals engaging in synthetic narcotics trafficking.

"The Chinese Communist Party has long had a role in facilitating the fentanyl crisis that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans," said Chairman Moolenaar. "The Select Committee’s groundbreaking report in 2024 showed how the CCP subsidized the production of fentanyl precursors sold to the Mexican cartels. The bipartisan legislation we are introducing today targets the entities and individuals who participated in this deadly and illicit practice. It is a crucial step toward holding them accountable for the pain they have caused American families."

The bill has not yet been assigned a number. 

Foreign Policy

US Resumes Deadly "Drug Boat" Strikes in Waters off Latin America. After an apparent two-month hiatus during which it announced no new attacks on vessels it describes as suspected drug boats, the US military announced Monday that it had attacked a boat in the Eastern Pacific, leaving two dead. 

"Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere executed a lethal kinetic strike on a low-profile vessel operating along established narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific," US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) said in a statement on X.

That brings to at least 223 the number of people killed in the US attacks, which have struck at least 67 vessels since the "Operation Southern Spear" campaign nearly one year ago. At least another eight people have been killed in similar boat attacks attributed to the CIA. 

The Trump administration has designated various drug trafficking organizations as "narcoterrorists" and claims it is in an "armed conflict" with those groups. It labels the Latin American mariners killed in the campaign as "unlawful combatants," although they were unarmed and combating no one.

The administration has told Congress the US is in an "armed conflict" against drug cartels, labeling those killed "unlawful combatants" and claiming the ability to engage in lethal strikes without judicial review due to a classified Justice Department finding.

Members of Congress, human rights groups, and experts in international and maritime law have all challenged that finding and argue instead that the administration is violating US, as well as international law. Under federal law, criminal suspects are to be apprehended and tried in a court of law, not gunned down at sea. US service members involved in the campaign could face charges including murder under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, as well as face charges of crimes against humanity under international law for extrajudicial executions.

Observers have also raised doubts about whether some of the victims were even involved in drug trafficking at all. Sen. Tim Kain (D-VA) earlier this month told the White House that following "a careful review" of classified information he has seen so far, that strikes have likely illegally killed "individuals who are not involved in narcotrafficking."

Kain, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, urged Trump to "examine the circumstances of these strikes" and cease what he called an "illegal, costly and ineffective" operation.