Brittany Alicia Mickens

Professora Sipin
English 211
3/18/15

Explanatory Narrative

Why isn`t medical marijuana/ marijuana legal in America? I chose this topic because I
thought this would be a good topic because a lot of people would like to know the answer too. I
knew that I would find many helpful articles online to help me with my research paper.
Cannabis plant, marijuana, is intended for use as a psychoactive drug and as medicine.
Medically, it is used to help patients with major illnesses such as cancer, AIDS, glaucoma and
many more. The use of medical marijuana is legal in twenty four states already but, why not all.
I have decided to research the pros and cons of marijuana usage. I also plan on talking about
how legalizing medical marijuana/ marijuana can effect society and its crime rates.
My first online article gave me a lot of pros and cons of using marijuana. It also gives me
the name of the speaker who say the statement seen online. According to Colin Blakemore, PhD,
Chair, Dept. of Physiology, University of Oxford and Leslie Iversen, PhD, Professor of
Pharmacology, Oxford University states that only 10% of marijuana users become dependent on
the drug and that nicotine is more addictive and worse. But on the other hand as stated by -Alan
J. Budney, PhD, Professor, University of Arkansas Center for Addiction Research, states that
marijuana and nicotine can have people go through the same withdrawals once the patient is

cured. I plan on using a lot of these pros and cons arguments in my paper to better show my
audience why medical marijuana/ marijuana should be legal. This is an online source titles, Top
10 Pros and Cons of Medical Marijuana, the author is unknown.
Many states have legalized marijuana, and in those states some actually make a career of
selling it to the society. In the online article title How legal marijuana is reshaping state
economies. By Patrik Jonsson. This article basically explains how legalizing marijuana will
decrease the amount of people going to jail over a substance that doesn`t have any harmful
effects. In this article more people ae questioning why alcohol and nicotine substances are legal
but can cause for a person to harm themselves or someone else. I can use this information to
back up my argument because if alcohol and nicotine products are legal at a certain age why
shouldnt marijuana be too? In my opinion alcohol and more dangerous and nicotine products
are more addictive than marijuana.
In Colen Gorenstein article, Marijuana lead to crack babies, Dr. David Samadi
complains about medical marijuana being an excuse just so people can smoke. He believes that
in most states people could receive a prescription for medical marijuana for the littlest things.
He believes that most people take advantage. But, his studies show that marijuana is the most
least dangerous recreational drug as appose to alcohol, nicotine, etc. I used Dr. David Samadi for
my mock interview. I asked him several question about how people can overdose on certain
medicines but those are still legal.
In Harry Levine`s article , The Scandal of Racist Marijuana Arrestsand What To Do
About It, talks about how and why blacks are the ones to most likely get arrested for not
smoking marijuana but simply having it on them when searched. Reading this articled informed
me that most police won`t bother to search people that are middle or high class because they

simply think only low class whites and blacks may be using marijuana. This is unfair because in
my opinion high class people can get more marijuana than the lower class because they have
more money. This article also informed me that some police quarters make it a goal to illegally
stop and search at least 10 people before they get a drug bust just to get a raise. Most people that
are found with marijuana aren`t even smoking it but get arrested just for having it in their pocket
or in a car.
In conclusion I plan on using all of these sources to shape my paper. I have plenty of
positive and negative reviews on legalizing medical marijuana/marijuana.