No Welfare for Weed, Essay Example

Following the path of legislation which forbade welfare spending and ATM withdrawal at non-essential venues, such as liquor stores and gentlemen’s exotic dance clubs, a 2012 law in Washington disqualified the legal purchase of marijuana with government-assisted money, spawning an unofficial “no welfare for weed”  slogan. The Associated Press provides a brief glimpse of the issue at hand along with some background and mild reactive statements made by politicians on both sides of the partisan aisle.

In “House Passes ‘No Welfare for Weed’ Bill”, generalizations form around the middle-road use of facts and omissions in this article. The generalization of the ethics behind such a decision largely fall to the individual reader while the writer gives a brief passing nod to the topic. The issues of the assistance itself, the moral and legal implications, and the sudden popularity of public opinion regarding recreational marijuana use could easily take up pages filled with numbers and personal stories to drive the reality of misused welfare home. However, the writers might have benefited from supporting the factual stance with statistical syllogism.

While the use of the wider, generalized scope of the article made it seem more balanced than many articles on controversial topics, even the quotes included provided a bland and distant analysis that was less persuasive than expected. Generalizations allow readers to make their own “educated guess” regarding social issues- without considering each person’s role in social issues in general. Still, the writer’s avoidance of judgment calls backfired next to the popular recreational marijuana discussion and could have benefited from a personal account of two families on different sides of the issue.

Works Cited

“House Passes ‘No Welfare for Weed’ Bill”. Retrieved 25 July 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2014/09/16/us/politics/ap-us-welfare-for-weed.html?_r=0. The Associated Press. 16 Sept. 2014.