Author Archives: Kathy Vo

Mercola, Dr. “Marijuana Research Supports Its Safety and Benefits.” Mercola.com. N.p., 16 May 2015. Web. 03 Aug. 2015.

The controversy I am discussing for my second essay is the benefits of marijuana. The text I chose, relates to my first source because it gives us a more in dept detail of the long term debate that  our people has been having in the U.S. when it comes to the use marijuana. The comments below the article will let me know what the audience is thinking and how they feel the situation should be addressed.

I believe that this source is credible because it shows a couple of doctors in the text and video who has something to say about their research on the topic of marijuana and the miracle they witnessed along with the research. In the article, the speaker included a lot of statistics and point of views of different doctors who has been using marijuana on their patients. We could say that this article is well respected in certain community as they spent time talking about the topic of marijuana. The article also appears to be respectable/ believable because it has facts and studies to support the idea they are trying to get through in the article. To make this source even more credible Dr. Mercola included other sources like Cancer.gov, PubMed, National Institute on Drug Abuse, and The Journal of Pain to show what she researched on. The text argument has a responsible manner because it include logical appeals evidence in the article instead of outrageous amount of emotional appeals.

According to the article that Dr. Mercola has written,  he states the statistic of the different percentage of American who favored the cannabis medical use and the legalization of marijuana in general. He then mention that this is a major problem in the “federal level,” to show that it is beyond our grasp. Dr. Mercola  also included other authority to back up his idea about the benefit of marijuana as he mention US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy view on how marijuana may be useful for certain medical conditions. In addition to that, he also compared the U.S to Israel in order to show how behind the U.S are in the study of marijuana benefit due to the  “frustrating array of hoops, which are expensive and time consuming” for the majority to support the research. He also mention the compounds that are found in marijuana and how the pot grower manipulate it to fit what they want. This is why we see effects like anxiety and psychosis. Dr. Mercola also made notes on how our body create similar compound founded in the cannabis plant to show how the compound is used to balance our system. Also he included a list of what marijuana can treats to state the good the plant can do. Lastlyhe included another doctor that shared a same interest in the matter of how good marijuana can do for the individual and how a prescription drug is more harmful.

Mitcham, Mark H. “Recreational Track Meet.” Marijuana Policy Political Cartoons. N.p.,19 Aug. 2014. Web. 30 July 2015.

Mark Mitcham was born in the 1960 and currently a resident in Denver, Colorado. He is a recovering alcoholic, and a self-identified stoner who had a technical career in electrical controls. He started drinking alcohol and smoking tobacco in grade school. Later in his life he began to smoke pot at the age of 16. Finally in January of 1991, he quit drinking  after joining a group call Alcoholics Anonymous. Following the quit to drinking, a year later Mitcham quit smoking  tobacco. Currently he is a personal medical marijuana user, who finds the substance to be quiet beneficial. Therefore his username on the website  is the soberstoner.

In Mark Mitcham’s political cartoon, “Recreational Track Meet,” Mitcham portrays the controversy of different narcotics. Throughout the cartoon, Mitcham compare three well known narcotics like cannabis (marijuana), tobacco, and alcohol to show what the individual does to a person. He add little well known side effect, such as high, out of breath, and drunk and lost. The  consumer safety line represent a finish line how  user of the substance has not resulted in death while the other two substance runners are represented with terrible side effect and number of death within the lanes.

For the joint, Mitcham shows a little more favoritism toward the substance marijuana by drawing it as a winner of the race in the “Recreational Track Meet” cartoon. He shows how cannabis is more beneficial than any of the other substances because it has a low annual death while the other substance has a crap load of annual deaths of 443,000 and 25,000.  Near the finish line of consumer safety, Mitcham place some statistics of annual deaths for the different substances to show how harmful each one is to the current user and ex-user.

As a cannabis user he might be bias, but instead he uses so many different factual information to show his background knowledge about the topic he is trying to get through to his audience. Mitcham gave a caption to the political cartoon on the original website to state what he is shock about as he researched on cannabis, tobacco, and alcohol. Within his research, Mitcham managed to conclude that tobacco has killed more American than any other legal drugs or non-legal drugs.

The reason for this cartoon creation was because he felt a passionate connection to the substance during his struggle of becoming a sober person. Therefore this cartoon is a contribution back to society.

Roberts, Chris. “Bad Medicine: Why marijuana advocates oppose an initiative legalizing pot.” S.F. Weekly ,ProQuest 19 May. 2010. Web. 19 July. 2015

Chris Roberts is an investigative journalist and writer from San Francisco, California and the author of  Bad Medicine: Why marijuana advocates oppose an initiative legalizing pot. In the article, published by New Times Media LLC in May of 2010, Roberts reported that the cops and medical marijuana activists has met eye to eye about what the effects of legalizing marijuana would have on  tax. According to the medical pot advocates, he emphasizes how cops don’t favor the issue because it deals with dope and how it would create new criminal penalties for marijuana use.

Roberts claims that California has recently crafted a law that treats marijuana as a more or less equal to alcohol while increasing tax revenue  to 1 billion dollars. Roberts mentions how the Tax Cannabis 2010 would make it a crime to use medical marijuana in front of a minor by penalizing the user with fines and incarceration. The punishments are strict in order to encourage those to stray away from marijuana use. The fines are up to $1,000 with a 6-month county jail confinement in addition to the 3 to 7 years of state prison sentence.  This illustrates the debate of the legalization of marijuana among the cops and marijuana medical advocates.

Although Roberts mention the costly affect of marijuana legalization, he also mention how 700,000 individuals question the legalization of marijuana while signing  a petition that goes against the legalization of marijuana. He especially mentions Dennis Peron to give a point a view of a person who has prior experience with the laws involving marijuana. He coined the name “Kevin Reed of San Francisco’s Green Cross” to specify a individual who signed a petition, giving credibility upon the subject of matter that had the majority of the population questioning the topic of legalization of marijuana.

Roberts included a researcher named “Jeff Jones” and a “University called Oaksterdam University’s Richard Lee” to show what results they concluded from the over-reactor on the topic. They discovered from the cops and marijuana medical advocates, who are against the legalization of marijuana, that they believed the legalization is meant to remove the felonies instead creating more felons in the process. The people Roberts  included in his article believed that the mandatory minimums provided by the law now would help the law enforcement officers  shift focus away from the marijuana issue.