Columbia, MO: State officials over the past year have expunged the records of more than 100,000 marijuana-related cases, according to data highlighted by Missouri NORML.
Provisions included in the state’s voter-approved adult-use legalization law, which took effect on December 8, 2022, provided a one-year timeline for the expungement of marijuana-related convictions. Since then, over 100,000 cases have been expunged, says Dan Viets – a NORML Board Member and a co-author of the law.
“This automatic expungement of marijuana cases is one of the most significant parts of Article XIV,” he said. “In addition to stopping approximately 20,000 marijuana arrests each year, the law now requires state government to undo much of the damage which was inflicted on hundreds of thousands of Missourians during the past 100 years.”
Viets predicted that additional cases would be expunged in the future. “The courts are going to need more time to finish the job, and in fact, it might be years before all the cases from the past century are expunged,” Viets acknowledged. “We’ve had more than 100 years of marijuana prohibition in Missouri. Many of the older cases have never been put on a database. So, it’s going to take a lot of physical work to locate those paper records in boxes and attics and go through them.”
Twenty-four states and the District of Columbia have enacted laws providing explicit pathways to either expunge (or otherwise set aside) the records of those with low-level marijuana convictions. According to publicly available data compiled by NORML, state and local officials have issued over 100,000 pardons and more than 1.7 million marijuana-related expungements since 2018.
Review the full text of the NORML Report, Marijuana Pardons and Expungements: By the Numbers. Additional information is available from Missouri NORML.