How many pardons listed on the DOJ clemency grants page are for drug‑related federal convictions?

Checked on January 21, 2026
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Executive summary

The public DOJ clemency portal exists and publishes clemency grants, but the documents provided to this briefing do not include a parsed list from which an exact, verifiable count of pardons for drug‑related federal convictions can be extracted [1] [2]. Reporting and secondary sources cite high‑profile drug‑related clemency examples, yet none of the supplied material supplies a comprehensive tally that supports a definitive numeric answer [3] [4] [5].

1. What the user is actually asking and why that matters

The question seeks a simple numeric truth—how many pardons on the DOJ clemency grants page were for drug‑related federal convictions—but that requires a current, itemized DOJ clemency list and a consistent definition of “drug‑related federal convictions” to classify each entry; the official DOJ site houses the clemency records [1] [2] but the reporting provided here does not reproduce that itemized, classifiable list needed to produce a reliable count [2].

2. What the available reporting shows about drug clemency, not the total count

Multiple pieces of coverage and institutional pages make clear that presidential clemency has been used for drug offenses historically and in recent high‑profile instances—Alice Johnson’s commutation and other non‑violent drug offender initiatives are examples cited in government statements and contemporary reporting [4] [6]. Legal background sources and the DOJ’s Office of the Pardon Attorney explain that clemency covers pardons and commutations for federal offenses, including drug crimes, but they stop short of listing every case in the supplied excerpts [7] [1].

3. Why the supplied sources cannot provide a definitive numeric answer

The central authoritative source named—the Department of Justice clemency grants page—exists and is cited in the dataset [2], but the reporting snippets and summaries supplied here do not include the full content of that page or a tabulation by offense type. Secondary reporting and encyclopedic pages recount aggregate numbers of clemency actions in certain administrations (for example, broad counts of pardons issued) but do not break those counts down in the provided excerpts into the subset that are drug‑related convictions [5] [8]. Therefore, any numeric claim made here would be unsupported by the materials supplied.

4. How a verifiable answer can be produced (methodology to follow)

A reliable count requires directly retrieving the DOJ’s Clemency Grants list (the site identified in the reporting) and classifying each named grant by statutory offense or disposition language on that page; the Office of the Pardon Attorney hosts the authoritative roster and would be the primary source for that exercise [1] [2]. Where DOJ entries are ambiguous, corroborating federal docket entries or the text of the underlying charging instruments would be needed to classify whether a conviction was “drug‑related,” a process the DOJ guidance and legal commentaries indicate is necessary for accurate categorization [7] [9].

5. Alternative viewpoints, agendas and limits of current coverage

Some outlets and advocacy groups emphasize drug clemency as evidence of reform-minded mercy programs—citing DOJ initiatives to prioritize non‑violent drug offenders—while political actors have also used clemency examples selectively to promote narratives of leniency or patronage [6] [4]. Wikipedia and media aggregations provide broad totals of clemency actions in recent presidencies but carry editorial and sourcing limitations that make them unreliable for precise legal classification without cross‑checking against the DOJ’s primary records [5].

6. Bottom line for readers seeking the number today

Based on the documents provided for this analysis, a precise count cannot be given: the DOJ clemency grants page is the authoritative source [2], but the supplied reporting excerpts do not include the full itemized entries needed to tally how many pardons on that page are for drug‑related federal convictions [1]. To produce the definitive number, one must query the DOJ clemency grants roster directly and classify each grant by offense using the DOJ entry and, where necessary, underlying court records [2] [7].

Want to dive deeper?
How to download and classify entries from the DOJ clemency grants page to count drug‑related pardons
Which high‑profile federal clemency grants in 2025‑2026 were for drug offenses and what were their underlying charges?
What criteria has the Office of the Pardon Attorney used to identify non‑violent federal drug offenders eligible for clemency?