Argumentative Essay: Medical And Recreational Marijuana

Within the last year and half leading up to the 2016 election, news sources have been strongly reporting their views about which candidate belonged to be in the white house. This spurred opinions and bias across both spectrums left and right politically, which showed just how subjective the news we are hearing can be depending on which outlet we are exposed to. While politics is the obvious example for bias, another area of debate that is heavily opinionated is the field dealing with medical and recreational marijuana. This can be seen in an article by Fox News in which Dr. David Samadi stated that a study claiming marijuana is 114 times less harmful than alcohol is “a very deceiving and flawed study” (Fox 1). Right off the bat the fact that
His surprisingly simple argument claiming bad logic is then followed by unsupported claims of physical problems “associated” with marijuana. Ironically enough he has no medical evidence for these claims while other sources have more in depth anecdotes of how marijuana helps solve physical problems not cause them. For example, the website Scientific American found that, “A large trial published in 2012 found that a cannabis extract significantly decreased muscle stiffness and other MS symptoms” (Jacobson 1). On top of the unsubstantiated medical claims, Samadi went out of his way to make a point that “pregnant women smoking weed in Colorado has led to many issues in their children, such as ADD” (Fox 1). The fact that he even had to point out that smoking anything is bad for a baby before its born shows how hard he is trying to support something that has already been shown to be