blog 2

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.