Sen. Bernie Sanders and former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg take part in one of the debates, this one in Las Vegas. (File Photo by MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images)

(CNSNews.com) - "We have a criminal justice system today that is not only broken, it is racist," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said at Wednesday night's CBS-hosted debate.

Sanders said the U.S. has "more people in jail than any other country on Earth, including China," and he attributed that to "a horrific war on drugs."

So I do believe that on day one we will change the federal controlled substance act, which if you can believe it, now equates heroin with marijuana. That's insane. We're going to take marijuana out of that and effectively legalize marijuana in every state in the country. What we are also going to do is move to expunge the records of those people arrested for possession of marijuana. And I'll tell you what else we're going to do. We're going to provide help to the African-American, Latino, Native American community to start businesses to sell legal marijuana rather than let a few corporations control the legalized marijuana market.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar said, "It is realistic to want to legalize marijuana."

But former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg played to both sides:

"Look, the first thing you do is we should not make this a criminal thing if you have a small amount. For dealers, yes. But for the average person, no. And you should expunge the records of those that got caught up in this before."

Bloomberg also said he would not interfere with states that already have legalized marijuana.

But, he added:

You should listen to the scientists and the doctors. They say go very slowly. They haven't done enough research, and the evidence so far is worrisome, before we get all our kids, particularly kids in their late teens, boys even more than girls, where this may be damaging their brains. Until we know the science, it's just nonsensical to push ahead, but the cat's out of the bag. So some states have it, you're not going to take it away. Decriminalize the possession.





