At least he supports decriminalization. That's a much higher priority than legalization.
Bad analogy. Although I do support it, marijuana legalization is not a civil rights issue. Priority number one should be stopping hundreds of thousands of kids/nonviolent offenders from being thrown into jail for smoking pot.
Cite? Please limit your answer for incarceration based on "smoking" pot as opposed to traffickers.
http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/crime#sthash.QBM8Tyac.dpbs
Of the 1,501,043 arrests for drug law violations, 82.3% were for possession of a controlled substance. 40.3% of those arrests were for possession of Marijuana. That comes out to about 604,908 arrests for Marijuana possession in 2013. So yeah, hundreds of thousands of people are being thrown into jail every year for smoking pot, especially Blacks, Latinos and poors.
I question the definition of "arrest" used here, and whether many such "arrests" simply involve police contact and release after service of a citation. Ibin Rushid's comment is more telling and specific, though.
Perhaps I'm seeing this through the lens of Ohio law which decriminalized up to 100 gm of mj ages ago. Oddly, drug paraphernalia was punishable by up to 30 days, so while a joint might only get you a fine (and mandatory license suspension even if not driving/riding in a car at the time), the paper could get you jail time (or the baggie the weed was in, or the pipe, etc.). That long overdue change was finally made only a couple years ago to where MJ related paraphernalia is now only punishable by a fine as well.
