Marijuana enforcement remains a major point of entry to the criminal justice system despite broad state level reforms. The knowledge base on marijuana enforcement, however, is small and predates the current national decriminalization-legalization movement and is comprised almost entirely of survey data on officer attitudes regarding drug law, policy, and strategy, generally, rather than marijuana specifically. Focusing instead on officer self-reported behavior and expressed enforcement intent, multiple US COPS Office and US Bureau of Justice Assistance grants enabled focus group interview exploration of how marijuana enforcement has been impacted since policy reform. Data were obtained from 148 sworn officers in seven agencies across six states that indicated marijuana incident outcomes are heavily dependent on officer discretion. Incident resolution was observed primarily as a function of situational dynamics (suspect demeanor, quantity of marijuana, and impaired driving concern), suspect background, agency prioritization of marijuana enforcement, and whether jurisdictions were prosecuting marijuana cases. Decision to arrest was correlated with officers’ age, years on force, gender, and ideological outlook regarding drug enforcement priorities and tended toward informal resolution in general and more so with younger and female officers. Despite national arrest statistics indicating otherwise, these findings suggest drug policy reform is affecting some discretionary leniency and nonenforcement of marijuana in favor of reported shiftwork focus on harder drugs and violence. Implications for drug enforcement and criminal justice more broadly center discussion and signal future research steps.

尽管州一级进行了广泛的改革，但大麻执法仍然是刑事司法系统的一个主要切入点。然而，关于大麻执法的知识库很小，并且早于当前的国家非刑事化-合法化运动，并且几乎完全由关于官员对毒品法律、政策和战略的总体态度的调查数据组成，而不是专门针对大麻。美国 COPS 办公室和美国司法局的多项援助拨款转而关注官员自我报告的行为和表达的执法意图，使焦点小组访谈能够探索自政策改革以来大麻执法受到的影响。从六个州的七个机构的 148 名宣誓就职的官员那里获得的数据表明，大麻事件的结果在很大程度上取决于官员的自由裁量权。事件解决主要根据情境动态（嫌疑人举止、大麻数量和不良驾驶问题）、嫌疑人背景、机构对大麻执法的优先次序以及司法管辖区是否起诉大麻案件进行观察。逮捕决定与警官的年龄、服役年限、性别和关于缉毒优先事项的意识形态观点相关，并且通常倾向于非正式解决，年轻和女性警官更是如此。尽管全国逮捕统计数据表明情况并非如此，但这些调查结果表明，毒品政策改革正在影响大麻的一些自由裁量权宽大处理和不执法，有利于报告的轮班工作重点关注更严重的毒品和暴力。