Analysis Of Why I Changed My Mind On Weed By Dr. Sanjay Gupta

1299 Words3 Pages

The legalization of marijuana has become a hot-button issue in the last several years with fifty-eight percent of Americans wanting the drug to be legalized, surging ten percentage points since 2012. (Swift, 2013) Due to the recent burst that the cannabis industry has experienced, there have been many genres written on the topic but two of the best genres that reach an audience and give them useful information is an internet article written by Dr. Sanjay Gupta titled "Why I Changed my Mind on Weed" and a video documentary made by comedian Doug Benson titled "Super High Me.” Dr. Gupta wrote the article for CNN.com admitting that he was wrong about cannabis in the past and now finds it a helpful and useful drug. Doug Benson filmed this documentary …show more content…

Sanjay Gupta as a neurosurgeon or a media personality on health-related issues who usually makes frequent appearances on CNN which makes his credibility among peers tremendous. This makes anything he writes or says highly respected and Americans are going to listen and actually absorb the information that he communicates. Dr. Gupta was able to admit that he was wrong about marijuana and write a completely different article about it because his credibility with other topics are well respected. If a rookie journalist would have flip-flopped on a topic as big as cannabis reform, their audience would have dismissed the article completely, but because of Gupta’s credibility, audiences continued to listen and respect his opinion. Dr. Gupta makes a connection with the audience by affecting the emotions of the audience and elicits sympathy. In “Why I changed my Mind on Weed” he mentions a three year old girl by the name of Charlotte Figi He says that medicinal marijuana has limited the her seizures from 300 per week to two or three per month. Dr. Gupta is trying to evoke an emotional response from the audience by saying how medical pot has helped a young girl get better. He elicits sympathy by mentioning that in 1970 the Assistant Secretary of Health, Dr. Roger Egeberg, wrote a letter recommending marijuana to be classified as a schedule 1 substance because there was not enough information on the plant. That recommendation has stayed the same for 45 years …show more content…

Gupta writes his article in a general format that includes several pictures and a video about cannabis but the way the audience gets drawn into the article is because he uses an immense amount of specialized language. The pictures and videos are all related to marijuana so his audience reading the article can also click on the other links to learn more about the topic. The conception of “Super High Me” originated with a joke from Doug Benson’s stand-up routine, asking “If there’s a movie called Super Size Me about a guy who ate McDonald’s every day, why couldn’t there be a movies call Super High Me, where I smoke pot every day?” He shared this joke with a filmmaker, Michael Blieden, who saw potential producing the joke into a film. The structure and delivery of this movie came from copying “Super Size Me” but instead of eating McDonalds every day for thirty days, it was smoking pot. This was a smart idea because it drew audiences into the project since “Super Size Me” was a very well-known and popular

Open Document