The legalization of marijuana has long been debated in  social and political platforms, but a recent poll conducted by Gallup shows that 50 percent of Americans now think the use of marijuana should be legalized.

The poll was a random selection of 1,005 adults across the United States. It has been conducted by Gallup every year since 1969, and the number of adults in favor of legalizing marijuana was consistently low until the mid-90s. Since then, the percentage in favor of legalizing marijuana has risen to 50 percent, according to the most current Gallup poll, with the opposition falling to 46 percent.

Legalizing marijuana could save hundreds of thousands of Americans from trouble with the law while putting millions of dollars back into our struggling economy.

Certainly American businessmen and women would understand that capitalist ideas are based on supply and demand. Because marijuana (or cannabis) has been illegal for some time, criminals have been making massive amounts of profit from supplying consumers of marijuana with their highly demanded product.

As in every business venture, it will be hard for cannabis to become profitable for legitimate trading after being legalized, but a temporary solution is available. Instead of legalizing marijuana, the government can decriminalize it. The F.B.I.’s annual “Uniform Crime Report” showed that nearly one million Americans were arrested in 2009 from minor drug charges related to marijuana.

The “War on Drugs” might be all but over if a million Americans weren’t punished to the fullest extent of the law for using such a recreational substance.

Besides decriminalization, a way to further ease toward the distribution of marijuana legally is to make it universally available to the sick. Currently, each state decides on its own requirements for the use of “medical