Civil liberties activists today challenged prosecutors’ arguments that sharing a small amount of marijuana among friends constitutes drug “distribution.”

“The Commonwealth is simply wrong to argue that sharing marijuana constitutes criminal distribution,” Matthew R. Segal, legal director for the ACLU of Massachusetts, said in a statement. “More fundamentally, the Commonwealth’s argument contradicts the will of the voters who approved marijuana decriminalization in 2008. The voters sought to limit marijuana prosecutions, not to invite creative ways for the Commonwealth to increase them.”