This information comes from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Here is the full report for Methamphetamine, Cocaine, and Other Psychostimulant Offenses in Federal Courts, 2022
Unfortunately, the report seems to emphasize increases/decreases from FY2021 to FY2022 (FY = Fiscal Year). Since 2021 is still a “pandemic” year that suffers from a variety of governmental restrictions and social concerns with lifestyle (compared to 2019), and 2022 is a different beast, I don’t feel these comparisons make much sense. However, there are statistics available for 2002-2022, and the pandemic years won’t have as much influence on statistics.
The most interesting data, for me at least, comes from TABLE 1 – Federal and state arrests by the Drug Enforcement Administration, by drug type, FY 2002–2022. There is a line item called “Average annual percent change, FY 2002–2022[e footnote].” The footnote lists: “Calculated using fiscal year counts in 2002 and in 2022. See Methodology.”
The table breaks up drugs into Psychostimulants, Opioids, Marijuana, and Other/non-drug (which is defined in footnote d as “Includes non-opioid pharmaceutical controlled substances, other depressants, sedatives, hallucinogens, synthetic cannabinoids, other steroids, equipment to manufacture controlled substances, and drug-use paraphernalia”).
From this table, there are 13 columns. 8 columns are decreases in percentage while 5 columns show increases in percentage. Of those 5 column increases, only two of those columns have increases of 5% or more. These are:
- Fentanyl: 39.9%
- Other Opioids: 5.1% (Other Opioids: Includes oxycodone, hydrocodone, hydromorphone (Palladone), oxymorphone, opioid treatment pharmaceuticals, opium, and morphine.)
Let’s look at Fentanyl arrests for the years 2015 – 2022:
- 2015: 60
- 2016: 248
- 2017: 697
- 2018: 1,227
- 2019: 1,759
- 2020: 2,305
- 2021: 3,138
- 2022: 4,924
In the table, methamphetamine only increased 1.1% from 2002 to 2022. However, this hides an important distinction between crystal meth and powder meth, which is elaborated on by the report:
“On average, DEA arrests for crystallized (crystal) methamphetamine increased (up 12% annually) each year from FY 2002 to FY 2022, while arrests for powder methamphetamine decreased (down 5% annually)”
I didn’t see anything surprising about the arrestee’s sex and age for psychostimulants:
- Men: 81.9%
- Age: 21-49: 84.3%
Here are some tidbits:
“From 2014 to 2022, the majority of psychostimulant overdose deaths have involved an opioid”
“[In FY2022]…Most (84%) persons sentenced for a drug offense involving psychostimulants were U.S. citizens.”
“In FY 2022, drug trafficking was the most common (98%) conviction offense among persons sentenced in federal district court for a psychostimulant offense”
“[In FY2022]….Most persons sentenced for a drug offense involving crack cocaine (98%) or methamphetamine (90%) had a prior criminal history at sentencing”