The
two articles that I have chosen are
competing narratives one, against the legalizing of marijuana, and the other is
the benefits of legalizing marijuana. The first article is called “3 Reasons Why Medical
Cannabis Should Be Legalized” and the second is called “5 Reasons Marijuana Should Remain Illegal”.
They both are trying to reach out and spread the awareness of the facts, myths,
and statistics that these professionals around the world have found. These
articles provide a closer look on the health aspect of marijuana and not so
much the other pros and cons of marijuana. They are very one sided on the
health aspect and provide a better look on the importance of medicinal
marijuana and the cons of using marijuana.
The first article, “3 Reasons Why Medical
Cannabis Should Be Legalized”, is mainly talking about health benefits and how
marijuana can be more safe than other medicines used today. For instance they
talk about how marijuana has helped many different types of chronic pain
illnesses. Some of these illnesses include AIDS, cancer and glaucoma and for
some circumstances medical marijuana is the only drug that can help their
illness. “Pain killers can be severely addictive and ruin patient’s lives,
while other mainstream drugs can cause gastrointestinal issues, allergic
reactions, blindness, internal bleeding, organ failure, and even death from
complications or overdose”(3 Reasons). This explains that medicinal marijuana
can cause less side effects and be more beneficial to society then other drugs.
They focus on the health aspect of marijuana because the main issue with
marijuana is the health issues it may bring. Health benefits are the reason for
why a substance like marijuana is legalized or used, if the substance is a
benefit to society then it should be legalized. When the audience is exposed to
the benefits spoke about in this article it leaves them thinking, legalizing
something with known health benefits shouldn’t be a hard issue to fix, right?
The second article, “5 Reasons Marijuana Should
Remain Illegal”, is about the problems associated with marijuana’s health
benefits. They talk about the addictive side to the drug, stated by Dr. Drew
“Of the 7.3 million persons aged 12 or older classified with illicit drug
dependence or abuse in 2012, 4.3 million persons had marijuana dependence or
abuse” (Hawkins). Being constantly exposed to the drug could increase the use
of the drug like in, Amsterdam. Here they are using examples of places in which
it hasn’t worked out where marijuana has been legalized as a recreational and
medical aspect as in Amsterdam. The health risks that they talk about in this
article is dependence, mental health and physical health. It causes memory loss
and the earlier you start smoking marijuana the worse the effects could be on
someone. They feel that marijuana causes more issues than it solves because at
the end of the article they talk about how you would not want your child to
live in a place where constant marijuana smoking is present.
Works cited
Administrator.
"Blog." 3 Reasons Why Medical Cannabis Should Be Legalized.
Medical Marijuana Association, Web. 14 Apr. 2017.
Hawkins, John. "John Hawkins - 5 Reasons
Marijuana Should Remain Illegal." Townhall. Townhall.com, 21 Jan.
2014. Web. 14 Apr. 2017.
