It’s never been easier to smoke weed in America. You can legally buy cannabis in more than half of all U.S. states and smoke marijuana in public with little fear of repercussions, whether you’re standing in downtown San Francisco or on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

But when it comes to Burning Man, the annual Nevada event world-famous for its shirking of societal conventions, openly doing drugs or smoking marijuana can land you in legal hot water. The festival is heavily patrolled by law enforcement, and people have been ticketed and even arrested for cannabis in previous years.

Jacob Smith, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada and a volunteer for the Burning Man Legal Observer Program, said that he knows people who have been ticketed and even removed from the festival for smoking pot.

“Although Burning Man can be a nurturing and safe space, there’s still real world dangers and potentially real world over-enforcement of marijuana laws,” Smith said.

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In 2019, 58 people were arrested with most being drug-related arrests, including one San Francisco man who was charged with felony pot possession and kept on $500,000 bail. However, arrests decreased in the following years. Last year, there were few arrests because rain created a weather emergency that left officers primarily helping people navigate a muddy desert, according to the Reno Gazette Journal.

FILE: Attendees dance during the annual Burning Man Festival in the early morning of Sept. 5, 2023.

The arrest numbers often don’t tell the entire story of drug enforcement at the event, according to Mitchell Gomez, the executive director of DanceSafe, a harm reduction organization that’s been active at Burning Man for 15 years. He said undercover police frequently approach people they suspect of........

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