Marijuana - argument for legalization - column

This article is for marijuana to be legalized, or at least for medical problems. It starts off with Keith Mano's personal story about his mother dying from a tumor in her spine. She is very weak and wasting before his eyes and she won't eat a single thing. After her weight drops about 15 pounds he takes action. Mano goes out to the street and buys marijuana to cook it into cookies. When he fed it to her in the hospital, 3 hours later she started eating, and they released her 15 days later. This touching story kicks off his article by portraying a good, clean use of marijuana that helped save an old woman's life. After this story, Mano goes on to explain how marijuana has very few health side effects and does not make one fall over or slurr their words. He uses he repetition of the phrase, " Alcohol is legal, but you can be put in jai for pot." He goes back to this saying at the end of every single paragraph after the story, to push it into the audiences head. In the paragraphs, Mano introduces reasons why marijuana is not bad, but helpful, and that alcohol is much worse. He makes it seem like people who drink alcohol are monsters. "Alcohol, remember, is big business. It has a powerful lobby, I'm certain. I suspect that, by intent or not, some of our most passionate anti-drug people are serving as mercenary militiamen in the liquor cartel's fight to keep marijuana from competing with beer or hooch." By using this quote, he makes anti-drug people look like alcoholics and defenders of something that is worse than they are fighting against. Using the words mercenary and militia men imply that the anti-drug people are ruthless soldiers who are just doing as they are told. The words liquor cartel are used to create the connection between drugs and alcohol, because cartel is a word mainly used for drugs.