Recently, it came to my attention about certain dangers involving devil’s lettuce. While it remains illegal in most of the world, it once held strong cultural significance in almost every country.

It especially played an important role in Hinduism; Lord Shiva is commonly associated with cannabis, and bhang is a popular drink over there and is legal to drink because it is not considered a psychotropic substance in that form.

That means any flower or weed purchased by citizens, is done so on the black market. Weed is widely used over there, but just as widely shunned by older generations.

I visited with two citizens of India about their experience as marijuana users. They both decided to not be anonymous to give credibility to my article.

They both said it is widely used, and can be seen by people in the streets; yet everyone seems to be convinced it has no medical significance and causes mental illnesses such as manic depression.

Vishal Nagpal was actually kidnapped by his parents with the help of bouncers, and put in rehab for using marijuana, twice. He can’t even begin to imagine a country where it is legal there because of how shunned it is by older generations.

Then the other issue, which led to my conversation with these two initially, is much of the weed on the black market is soaked in harmful chemicals; one of these is rat poison. There is a whole process they have to go through to try to get most of it off, but they can’t. So they face side effects from inhaling this poison; including having to drink water with certain pH levels to help their bodies cope with this chemical.

Far less safe than the beautiful, clean nuggets we see in the United States thanks to legalization. The dangers presented in areas where it is illegal are not worth it, considering the research coming out on the benefits of marijuana.

While not all of the weed in India is soaked in toxic chemicals, it still is something happening that needs to be addressed; and it could be fixed with legalization.

There comes a point when we have to ask ourselves, is continuing to ban illegal substances really doing any good for the health of society? Some countries have started experimenting with more liberal drug laws, but nothing has been long term enough to see what differences it has made.