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Question

can you give some ideas? I need to insert a brief paragraph stating an objection to the author's arguments and then responding to the objection as he might.
the author's arguments are that the United States must declare an end to the war on drugs and marijuana should be accepted as personal use.
thanks

Answer 1

The war on drugs is a political campaign. It was created to get votes. There was no evidence to back it up at the time it was created. Since then officials have tried to back it up but have failed to do so.

See these websites:
http://www.drugsense.org/wodclock.htm
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/basicfax7.htm
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/cron/
http://www.nationalreview.com/12feb96/drug.html

Someone arguing for the war on drugs will say that drug use is on the rise and we need to punish people who do drugs, we need to have this war on drugs to decrease drug use.

Someone against the war on drugs will say that we do need to do these things but the "war on drugs" is not the most effective way of dealing with drug use. We need prevention and not prison. We need treatment and not prison.


Here is info. on legalizing marijuana:
www.mjlegal.org/
economics.about.com/od/incometaxestaxcuts/a/marijuana.htm
www.norml.org/
www.psychedelic-library.org/mcvay.htm
digg.com/politics/CNN_Runs_Story_on_Marijuana_Legalization
( i didn't read these sites)

How legalizing marijuana is related to the war on drugs:
The war on drugs punishes even minor drug use. Legalizing marijuana would stop imprisonment of such minor drug use.
It would also create more money that could be used to fight against drug use. On the other hand, there would be more people doing drugs. Imagine a cop who smokes marijuana legally in his free time, I wouldn't want him protecting me.

Hope this gets you started.

Answer 2

Objection: The United States declaring an end to the war on drugs is absolutely asinine. Drugs are a root problem to the decay of our society today. There have been countless people who have thrown away promising futures due to the lure of these banned substances. The end result is that not only is that person negatively affected, but our community and society as a whole has lost a valuable contributor. To end this war would only serve to increase these negative numbers and that can only spell total breakdown.

Response: In order to counteract this ongoing problem, we have to look at our behavioral tendencies. We as a society tend to gravitate towards the things that we are told are "bad" for us. Following this train of thought, people will always want to find out why something is so bad or try these things just to say they did it. This is the situation with the war on drugs. If this war is called off, we basically negate these tendencies because the thrill or the sense of adventure is gone.