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Rhetorical Analysis Of Richar Richard Nixon War On Drugs Speech

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President RIchard Nixon famously declared a “war on drugs” on June 17, 1971 to the Congress of the United States. In his speech, he asked Congress for an amendment that would provide his 1972 budget with an additional 155 million dollars to control drug abuse. This would provide president Nixon with a budget of 371 million dollars for programs to control drug abuse in the United States. To put it in more context, during this time, drugs had become a symbol of youthful rebellion, social disruption, and political disapproval. Nixon saw this as a issue because of the increase in narcotic deaths in New York City during the span of the 1960 and 1970. According to Nixon, “In 1960, less than 200 narcotic deaths were recorded in New York City. In 1970, the figure had risen to over 1,000” (1). In his own words, he claims that drug addiction is a national and international problem. Furthermore, Nixon’s method of fixing the drug/drug abuse problems involved five main ideas, a new approach to rehabilitation, a coordinated federal response, making rehabilitation a new priority, additional enforcement needs, and international involvement. …show more content…

For better or worse, this speech launched a campaign on a war that is still being fought today. Truly, the most surprising element of this speech was the use of the emotions, fear and hope. Nixon’s speech used fear as a mechanism to further prove his point on why drugs is public enemy number one. While, using hope as a mechanism to combat these fears with ways to prevent and control drug abuse. Drug abuse is a very controversial topic that many people have different opinions about. In my opinion, the war on drugs is a failure and Nixon was the cause of it. Although, Nixon had a good understanding of supply and demand, he worried more about punishing the drug addicts, rather than instituting them back into

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In “How About Low-Cost Drugs for Addicts?” (1995), Louis Nizer argues that drug addiction is a serious problem and we are losing the ability to gain control over drug addiction. Nizer suggests the government should create clinics that provide drugs free or at nominal cost and be staffed by psychiatrists. The benefits of the new approach will push the mob to lose the main source of its income, the drug dealers will run out of business, and the police or other law enforcement authorities would be freed to take care of other crimes. Nizer also believes that free drugs will win the war against domestic terrorism caused by addicts. On the other hand, Nizer provides some of the opposing arguments that providing free drugs would consign a person to

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This scandal caused many Americans and Republican politicians to push Eisenhower to remove Nixon as his running mate and to question Nixon’s integrity. In rebuttal to the scandal, Nixon took the bull by the horns and defended himself by going on live national television and addressed the nation by giving the famous Checkers speech. The soon to be Vice-President articulated his speech with a perfect combination of Pathos, Ethos, and Logos to turn the tables from making everyone hate him to making the American People and Republican Politicians love him. Nixon’s integrity was

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Due to the unprecedented expansion of the war on drugs by the Reagan administration started a long period of skyrocketing rates of incarceration. The huge number of offenders incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenders increased from 50,000 to 1980 to over 400,000 by the year 1997. In 1981, Nancy Reagan began a highly publicized antidrug campaign called “Just Say No”, as public concerns arose due to the portrayals by the media about people addicted to a smoke-able form of cocaine dubbed as “crack”. This campaign set the stage for zero tolerance policies implemented in the late 1980’s.

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In his article, “Toward a Policy on Drugs,” Elliot Currie discusses “the magnitude and severity of our drug crisis” (para. 21), and how “no other country has anything resembling the American drug problem” (para. 21). The best way to describe America’s drug problem is that it is a hole continuously digs itself deeper. America’s drug issues were likely comparable to other country’s at one point in time, but today it can be blamed on the “street cultures” (para. 21) that continue to use and spread the use of illegal drugs. These street cultures transcend the common stereotype of drug users, such as low income communities in cities or welfare recipients, and can be found in every economic class and location. They are groups of people who have

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On August 8th, 1974 at exactly 9:01 pm, Richard Nixon--former President-- gave a speech that would affect both United States history and the american people. Richard Nixon’s argument and claim lay within the textual aspects, in other words, his tone, attitude, and the strategic ways of presenting to his audience. In this historical speech, Richard Nixon broadcasted his character, past decisions, and future advice to the people of the United States in order to justify his resignation from the presidential office. The rhetorical stylistic tools were effective and instrumental in backing up the argument. Recognition of audience was important, because it will determine his attitude and tone, which was innocence.

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Nixon successfully apologized to the country by using pathos, ethos, and logos, as well as other forms of rhetoric. In his speech, Nixon used forms of logos to appeal to people’s sense of logic. He wanted to give his reasoning of resigning in a way he knew people would understand. He said “It has become evident to me that i no longer have a strong enough political base in congress.”.

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Illicit drugs are drugs that have been considered illegal, such as, heroin, cocaine, and marijuana, in some locations (Levinthal, 2016). Legislating drugs began around 1900. In essence, the government let society govern the use and opinions of drugs. Most of society looked down upon the nonmedical use of drugs.

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The use of narcotics like cocaine, claimed many lives and earned widespread coverage by media and news. Following this Nancy Reagan began the “War on Drugs”, a campaign to combat pre-existing drug usage and prevent future

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Which at first glance looks like a positive thing but once you dive deeper into what his real motives are, it's rather eye opening. Let's start with the war on crime. During this time you had the black panthers who were people fighting for civil rights, people who were fighting for women's rights, and people who were fighting for gay rights. Nixon felt the need to fight against these movements and therefore one was more likely to get arrested for attending these rallies— for committing a crime which really wasn't a crime. He strategically blinded the public to this by calling it "the war on crime".

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The thirty seventh president’s tone throughout the speech was genuine and anguished. He stated frequently his regret towards his resignation; when this passage is read aloud, it is stressed heavily on pathos and that Nixon defended his decision with the selflessness of his own emotions and did what is better for the country (“American”). In his speech, Richard Nixon establishes his credibility and then goes on to show the logic of why he is resigning along with sparking the reader’s emotions in defense of him through the use of frequent fallacies and rhetorical devices. Nixon goes on to speak of his accomplishments and the tasks he hopes the American people will achieve with a new president, but those ideas are shadowed by the steady reminders by Nixon himself of the circumstances that are causing him to resign the Presidency that overall make Nixon’s arguments to logic and his credibility seem

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