I remember being force-fed green, leafy salads when I was a kid. Over the ages, my brand of leaf has changed, but it’s a much more complex process to procure these greens—and they definitely can’t be served on the dinner table.

I think it’s time that we, a young, educated group of society, find a more logical solution to tackle the country’s current weed “problem”—which really isn’t even a problem, considering a grand total of zero people died last year from a marijuana overdose.

Legalizing marijuana is probably our best cannabis avenue right now. Not because it would become easily available (and we could finally do away with our well-thought-out hiding places), but because it would be the first step to efficiently monitoring the drug’s distribution.

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Legalization will give government organizations the power to set up an age restriction, which could help to safeguard minors against substance abuse.

This will also allow strict regulatory laws to be practiced without imposing an obviously unenforceable blanket ban, which are never a good thing.

The more you restrict something, the more people will seek it out, anyway.

With our generation’s “rules are meant to be broken” mentality, the current medicinal-usage-only law doesn’t hold up.

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It withholds information that could prove vital to finding more beneficial uses for marijuana. Most known uses of marijuana have been discovered by accident, but with properly curated studies, who knows what diseases it could cure.

Another serious problem that arises out of marijuana’s illegality is the issue of people getting recruited as drug mules for hideous amounts of money.

In this day and age, when money is the driving force behind most people’s actions, the whole drug-smuggling racket works on the “supply and demand” theory.

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If it’s legalized, a fraction of drug mules currently being employed—and putting their lives in danger—can be reduced since import and export could potentially be lawfully allowed and tracked.

There are probably cons of marijuana legalization too, but the pros seem to heavily outweigh them.

It’s easy to reach a logical solution.

Legalization is an issue that almost the whole world has been struggling with for quite a while now. We know what’s happening behind closed doors, and we recognize the aroma of sweet Mary Jane sneaking out from under the cracks in the windows.

Maybe it’s time we gain the liberty to enjoy a marijuana cigarette on a cold winter night out in the open, not much unlike a cold beer on a hot summer day. 

Follow Megha Raghunathan on Twitter.