Stephen Toulmin was born on March 25, 1922 (same day as me!). Toulmin was a philosopher, educator and author. Toulmin found interest in analyzing arguments. Stephen created the The Toulmin Model of Argumentation, “a diagram containing six interrelated components used for analyzing arguments, was considered his most influential work, particularly in the field of rhetoric and communication, and in computer science.” Based on the reasonable conditions of the argument I chose, and the Toulmin Model I was able to follow Ryan Schutte’s logical perspective. Schuette provided proper and educational supporting claims to back up the Republican “pro legalization of marijuana” argument. Ryan Schuette, the writer of “The Republican Argument for Legalizing Pot” states four possible supporting claims to follow up his “Pro” argument. For his first claim Schuette believes pot would create jobs and help prevent Detroit-style bankruptcies. Second being, legalizing marijuana could unplug overcrowded prisons and save tax dollars. Thirdly, legalization of marijuana could help starve violent drug cartels at home and abroad. Finally, Schuette argues that marijuana can help ease the suffering of those who live with chronic illnesses. Schuette creates supporting grounds to carry out his four claims.
Re-stating his first claim in his argument; ‘creating jobs and help prevent Detroit style bankruptcies’ Schuette explains that legalizing marijuana will create job opportunities for civilians. Just as licensed businesses selling alcohol and tobacco create jobs. Ultimately, these new jobs would spark economic growth. “The pro-legalization organization NORML cites a 1994 study on its website that used job data from Amsterdam to suggest that business spin-offs like coffeehouses, gardening tools, and more could create more than 60,000 retailers and 100,000 careers.” Ryan also intelligently inserted the billion dollar total revenue that we comprehend in awe. “Cato Institute suggested in 2010 that legalization could generate as much as $8.7 billion in annual revenue for federal and state coffers.” The grounds laid out for his second claim ‘Unplugging overcrowded prisons and saving tax dollars.’ Schuette clearly gets the point across within this second claim. The United States is just throwing billions of dollars to waste. According to Cato Institute, “we lose $17.4 billion in taxpayer funds every year to arrests for non-violent drug crimes like sale and possession. The Marijuana Policy Project counted 872,720 pot-related arrests in the United States in 2007 alone.” Ryan explains the related data stating that we do not need non-violent drug prisons at capacity. Spending around 80 billion dollars in building prisons in 2010 having forty-seven percent of those inmates incarcerated for drug related offenses. Ryan Schuette boldly states, “Maybe the land of the free could then ditch it’s sadly ironic reputation as the country with the highest incarceration in the world, and the Population Reference Bureau could confer the title on Russia.” The Washington Post reports, “Studies estimated that the ballot initiatives and votes in Colorado and Washington alone would sap approximately $2.8 billion in combined business away from Mexican cartels, resulting in 20 to 30 percent less annual revenue for people who truly menace our countries.”
To be fair Ryan does reveal the realistic perspective that legalization of pot in California would only squeeze revenue for cartels by about 2 to 4 percent; but with the drug war responsible for 60 to 100 thousand deaths just from 2006 to 2012, the small percent of business we take away from the cartels shouldn’t matter, just as long as the situation is improving. What a lot of citizens do not realize is that participating in the consumption of marijuana is not always recreational. In 2005, 133 million Americans – almost 1 out of every 2 adults – had at least one chronic illness according to CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) In Ryan’s fourth claim he believes that the legalization of marijuana could help ease the pain of those who suffer . According to one recent survey, “76 percent of doctors worldwide would actually sign off on marijuana for medicinal use.” Listed by WebMd there are only some short-term psychological side effects that could POSSIBLY happen. Including Distorted sense of time
Paranoia
Magical or “random” thinking
Short-term memory loss
Anxiety and depression
The Drug Enforcement Agency lists marijuana alongside addictive substances
like heroin, as a Schedule I drug. A Schedule I drug is labeled by the following regulations: “Schedule I drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Schedule I drugs are the most dangerous drugs of all the drug schedules that result in potentially severe psychological or physical dependence. Some examples of Schedule I drugs are: heroin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), marijuana (cannabis), 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (ecstasy), methaqualone, and peyote” (United States Drug Enforcement Administration). Schuette is onto a very persuasive type of argument based off of his educated grounds. In Schutte’s article the warrant, or as the Toulmin model states “the principle, provision or chain of reasoning that connects the grounds to the claim is best described by the generalization model.” I pulled the following paragraph out of the argument to explain. “Colorado offers a working example in real-time, with the amendment that passed last year expected to supply roughly $100 million in projected annual tax revenue and savings for the state, according to the Colorado Center on Law and Policy.
Those dollars will come from a combined $23.2 million in state and local sales taxes as well as from 372 new jobs created as a result of the amendment, with those numbers set to double over the next four years.” Basing the generalization model upon the paragraph above Ryan Schuette is taking a specific situation (Colorado legalizing marijuana and their success) and generalizing the matter by extending the possible success throughout the United States with the same positive opportunities. With the explanation of all claims, grounds, and the specific warrant that best fit this argument Mr. Schuttes article provides a perfect lay out for a well grounded argument pro pot. Using the logical perspective of the Toulmin model I was able to break down the argument “Pro Pot” and organize to the best of my abilities in able to help others better understand. Sometimes breaking down an argument is the best way to fully understand and respond.
Work Cited
http://www.policymic.com/articles/64121/marijuana-legalization-the-republican-argumen.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/11/09/how-marijuana-legaliza tion-will-affect-mexicos-cartels-in-charts/
http://www.justice.gov/dea/druginfo/ds.shtmlt-for-doing-it
http://www.cdc.gov
http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/marijuana-use-and-its-effects
