Persuasive Speech Outline For Legalizing Marijuana

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General Purpose: To persuade the audience to be in favor of legalizing marijuana.

I. INTRODUCTION
A. Attention Gainer- Editors of the magazine Lancet have stated that “cannabis per se is not a hazard to society but driving it further underground may well be.”
B. Reason to Listen- As the consumption of marijuana has exponentially increased, I’m sure all of you guys at some point have smoked, or been around people who have smoked, and that is why this topic is relevant to us.
C. Speaker Credibility (right to inform)- Being someone who enjoys smoking marijuana, and after doing a fair amount of research.
D. Thesis statement- I’m going to talk about why the consumption of both medical and recreational marijuana should be legalized.
E. Preview your Main Points- Today, …show more content…

Marijuana has been regarded as a harmful drug that can endanger lives and is considered to be nothing more than an extra problem to be dealt with in today’s society. However, based on its medical value and economic benefits, the marijuana has proven to outweigh its negatives with numerous other positives. Although marijuana is legal in 29 states, the fact still remains that weed is still that under federal law, marijuana is classified as a schedule I drug which is the highest classification, also including heroin and ecstasy.
2. According to an analysis done by [ACLU], marijuana arrests now account for more than half of all drug arrests in the United States. Of the 8.2 million marijuana arrests between 2001 and 2010, 88% were for simply having marijuana. Some of these people serve almost the same amount of time as rape and murder convicts, which is both morally wrong but also is a waste of resource that the government could use otherwise.
3. In the past 3 months, 55 people have died of Heroin overdose, 48 people have died of Cocaine overdose, and 42 people have died of alcohol poisoning in America. Marijuana is non-toxic and has never caused a fatal overdose in over 7,000 years of recorded human

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