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Article Analysis Of Weed ! By Toby Sells And Micaela Watts

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Weed! Article Analysis The article, “Weed!”, written by Toby Sells and Micaela Watts, touches on the strictness of marijuana laws in the South. This article explores the racial injustices and penalizations African Americans face with marijuana possession. It outlines the effects the law has on who the police arrest and utilizes each rhetorical appeal to argue how softening the laws would be beneficial. They appeal to the people who think that there is little harm to the ownership of marijuana and those who are for changing the law. The authors introduce Berlin Boyd’s case and how he sought to lessen the penalties for owning marijuana. The case was taken to City Hall and the council passed Boyd’s ordinance, which pushed helping African Americans and keep them out the criminal-justice-system quagmire. Sells and Watts develop their thesis by presenting facts of the …show more content…

They began by introducing Berlin Boyd’s case and defining it as a vote that “pushed the need to do something different to aid African Americans in Memphis, to level economic disparities, and help keep them out of the criminal-justice-system quagmire” (Sells and Watts 276). The authors explain that when officers catch someone with marijuana, it is up to their discretion. They are allowed two choices: to issue a $50 fine or current state charge ($2,500 fine). By providing that comparison, it is evident to the reader that that is an unjust way to charge those with marijuana. The authors then show the statistics of the people who get arrested in previous years and state that “The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says blacks in the Memphis area are 4.2 times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession as a white person, though the two groups use marijuana at comparable rates” (277). Through providing facts and data, the authors demonstrate the usage of logical

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