Marijuana Opposition Arguments Go Up in Smoke: A Persuasive Speech Presented in COMM 1100 section 024D Camil Grabowski University of Connecticut Legalization of Marijuana in the United States Introduction I. Back when Barrack Obama ran for president in 2008 he was asked about drugs and he admitted to using marijuana. He said, “When I was a kid, I inhaled frequently. That was the point.” The man who ran our country for the last 8 years used this illegal drug when he was younger. II. The purpose of this speech is to persuade everyone to support the legalization of recreational marijuana. III. In 1970, congress made a decision to classify marijuana as a Schedule I substance considering it equally as dangerous as heroin and …show more content…
Prohibition doesn’t work a. Some people think that keeping marijuana illegal helps protect people from using the drug. b. By keeping marijuana illegal in our country it just causes more problems because it is unregulated and it is wasting the governments money. c. The prohibition has not stopped people from using marijuana and the numbers of users is increasing i. “Over 100 million Americans nationally have used marijuana despite prohibition, and one in ten – according to current government survey data – use it regularly” (Armentano). ii. According to a Gallup poll 44% of Americans have tried marijuana in 2015 (Ferner). d. The cost of keeping marijuana illegal and under control is extremely expensive; the government spends billions of dollars annually to enforce the law but can’t keep up with the black market. i. “Marijuana prohibition now costs state and federal government as much as $20 billion a year, an economist told The Huffington Post” (Sledge). e. Marijuana is sold on the black market so anyone could buy it because it is unregulated. i. Kids say its easier to buy marijuana than it is to buy alcohol or cigarettes. ii. Drug dealers don’t care who they sell to as long as they have the …show more content…
(2015, August 28). NORML.org - Working to Reform Marijuana Laws. Retrieved April 8, 2016, from http://norml.org/component/zoo/category/recent-research-on-medical-marijuana DEA / Drug Scheduling. (n.d.). Retrieved April 8, 2016, from http://www.dea.gov/druginfo/ds.shtml Ferner, M. (2105, July 23). More Americans Than Ever Say They’ve Tried Marijuana, Gallup Poll Finds. Retrieved April 8, 2016, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/marijuana-poll_us_55b010c6e4b07af29d577562 Harrell, D. (2008, February 12). Obama's Drug Use Debated. Retrieved April 8, 2016, from http://www.cbsnews.com/news/obamas-drug-use-debated/ Hill, B. (n.d.). Pennsylvania state senate: Legalize marijuana for medical/recreational use. Retrieved April 8, 2016, from https://www.change.org/p/pennsylvania-state-senate-legalize-marijuana-for-medical-recreational-use Sledge, M. (2013, April 20). Marijuana Prohibition Now Costs The Government $20 Billion A Year: Economist. Retrieved April 8, 2016, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/20/marijuana-prohibition-costs_n_3123397.html What the Science Says. (n.d.). Retrieved April 8, 2016, from
Legalization of Marijuana has quickly become a controversial issue in America. In the United States, legalization of marijuana for medicinal purposes is spreading to the state level. For example, in November 1996, the people of California and Arizona voted to legalize marijuana for medicinal reasons. As a result of Proposition 215 in California, patients now smoke marijuana provided their physician recommends its usage. A prescription is not required, and marijuana continues to be illegal to prescribe. The Clinton administration responded that it “would not recognize these decisions, and would prosecute physicians who recommend or provide marijuana to their patients.” Although California and Arizona are the only two states to have already passed laws regulating marijuana usage, twenty-six states and the District of Columbia have laws and resolutions regarding marijuana usage. These laws and resolutions range from establishing therapeutic research programs, to allowing doctors to prescribe marijuana, to asking the federal government to lift the ban. Despite the states’ desires to have marijuana legalized for medicinal purposes, the US National Institutes of Health examined all existing clinical evidence about smoked marijuana and concluded that, “There is no scientifically sound evidence that smoked marijuana is medically superior to currently available therapies.”
The cost of marijuana prohibition is gigantic. Including policing, court appearances, and incarceration, the bill on taxpayers is endless and a large amount of this money is for cases of simple marijuana possession. Daniel Egan and Jeffrey A. Miron estimate that, “[L]egalizing marijuana would save...$8 billion per year in prohibition enforcement costs”(Budgetary,17). This is a huge amount of money that could make its way elsewhere into the infrastructure like drug awareness and prevention. Not to mention the priceless amount of time given back to the police forces to peruse more harmful crimes. In their report the Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs finds “[A]pproximately 50,000 drug-related charges in 1999.... Overall, 54%... were for possession [of cannabis]”(Cannabis,130). As far as budget costs for any part of the judicial system go, a 54% reduction in anything would go along way. The legalisat...
The purpose of the speech is to inform the audience about the pro’s and con’s of marijuana as well as the medical uses of marijuana .
“One function of government is to protect citizens from harm, whether it is from foreign enemies or from internal causes such as poisonous food or contaminated water” (Wright). Therefore that is what one should be doing. Marijuana use to be legal in the United States. About 90% of the 782,000 people that are in the United States in 2007 were arrested for marijuana- related crimes (Decriminalizing). They were kept in custody for having possession of the drug (Decriminalizing). Between 60,000- 85,000 people of those 782,000 arrested were put in prison (Decriminalizing). Marijuana should not become decriminalized for many reasons. Some of the reasons include that it doesn’t meet classification standards to be a legal or illegal drug for medical purposes and people aren’t using the drug for the right reasons.
Through recent years, society has been faced with the controversial and obtrusive issue of whether or not to legalize marijuana. In the past, and even still in the present, marijuana has often been regarded as an illicit and malicious drug. However, research shows that marijuana is not nearly as bad as society deems it to be. Rather it can be used to greatly benefit humanity. Cannabis’ (marijuana) range of beneficial uses include: helping former veterans cope with life after war, alleviate symptoms for people who suffer with Parkinson 's and epilepsy, and replace prescription drugs. This disputation regarding marijuana can be solved by simply legalizing it for recreational purposes, and implementing laws and regulations similar to that of alcohol.
The public has been highly respondent to the idea of legalizing marijuana. Many states are making decisions independently from the federal government. “A growing share of the American public supports liberalizing marijuana laws. For years surveys by CNN and other news organizations have found that most Americans agree pot smokers should not go to jail. In polls taken this year by Zogby, CBS News, and Rasmussen Repor...
The selling and smuggling of marijuana “provide billions of dollars annually for smugglers and distributors.” Although the drug lords earn millions of dollars from smuggling marijuana into the United States, most of the money comes from the more hardcore drugs. These include cocaine, heroin and other methamphetamines and are what cause most of the crime and violence around our southern border. “Mexico has become a major cocaine route to the US,” and that is why legalizing marijuana would not stop the war on drugs. Prisons in the United States are not full of people who were caught with a few grams of pot or a few joints. Most arrests and charges dealing with marijuana come from people who have been arrested before and are repeat offenders. Seven-Hundred Thousand of the arrests because of marijuana come from those people who repeatedly get caught for other misdemeanors as well. For those who are in prison due to marijuana related charges, the majority have been caught with over one-hundred pounds of the drug. One-hundred pounds is a colossal amount of marijuana that not an average person could obtain or even afford. Drug dealers are the only people that would need to obtain that much marijuana for selling purposes. The legalizing of marijuana would not stop the violence or the war on drugs with
The legalization of marijuana has the potential to bring our economy back to life if it were to be legalized. There are a number of ways in which legalization could improve the economy. We could use the revenue from taxes on marijuana to provide for a better quality of life for Americans in need. Legalizing marijuana would also save us money by cutting the cost of putting someone in jail for harmless marijuana related charges that waste tax money. Also it would put more money into circulation by keeping the profits off the black market and into the legal and taxed market. With an estimated twenty-five million active marijuana smokers in America that consume nearly thirty-one million pounds of marijuana each year, we are missing out on extreme revenue that this country cannot afford to go without for much longer (Krulick).
The public presser to allow the medical use of marijuana, marijuana Is the most commonly used illegal drug in the united states and is considered by young adults to be the illicit drug with t...
Rosenthal, Ed, and Steve Kubby (2004) "Marijuana Should Be Legalized for Medical Use." Retrieved from Opposing Viewpoints: The War on Drugs.
Marijuana has more benefits of it being federally legalized than keeping it illegal. The amount of money that can be generated from the marijuana plant is astonishing and would really help America’s economy. Also the best way to prevent teenagers and adolescents from using drugs or alcohol is to inform them on the truth. By classifying marijuana a schedule one drug and cocaine a schedule two the United States government is promoting that cocaine is bad but not as bad when compared to marijuana.
People ask, “What good does legalizing Marijuana do? It is a drug for a reason.” Well, I, along with numerous others question, “What are those reasons? What good does keeping it illegal do?” One reason to legalize the “drug” is that it can save/earn the United States of America a great deal of money. “Nationwide, law enforcement officials made 1.5 million drug arrests in 2011, more than 40 perce...
Despite the 1976 ruling by the federal government that marijuana has “no acceptable medical use”, sixteen states have passed medical marijuana laws that allow for patient use o...
To the AIDS or cancer patient, marijuana is the plant that fights nausea and appetite loss. To the nutritionist, its seed is second only to the soybean in nutritional value and is a source of cooking oil and vitamins. To the paper or cloth manufacturer, it is the plant that provided much of our paper and clothing for hundreds of years and produces four times more fiber per acre than trees. To the environmentalist, it is the plant that could greatly slow deforestation, restore robbed nutrients by other crops, and help prevent erosion. Preliminary findings show the drug may prove effective against glaucoma and asthma, and control such side nausea in cancer treatment. I concretely believe that marijuana should be legalized in the United States, primarily for the use of medicinal purposes. In technical or for the average American, marijuana, it is used only for recreational purposes. I think marijuana is a plant that could save many lives if it was made legal. My goal is to reverse prejudices, relieve ignorance, and inform people of the known and potential therapeutic uses of this remarkable plant.
In the perspective of America's war on drugs, marijuana is one of the biggest enemies. And since alcohol and tobacco, two life threatening substances, are legal it is a relevant question to ask why marijuana is illegal. The taxpayers of America can partly answer this question when they fill out their tax forms and when they hear the hash rhetoric used against marijuana by the government. The fact that marijuana is illegal is sufficiently caused by the amount of money, jobs, and pride invested in the drug war. In other words, the government cannot turn back now.