The Union The Business Behind Getting High Ethos

The truth about marijuana is that it should be legalized, and this is the stance that the documentary, “The Union: The Business Behind Getting High” is taking. The film uses great examples of ethos, pathos, and logos in an effective and persuasive way. “The Union: The Business Behind Getting High” details the hypocrisy in keeping marijuana illegal while having tobacco, a far more dangerous drug, legal, the reasons behind marijuana being illegal flipping to the complete opposite of its origin as an illegal substance, how marijuana is one of the most versatile and healthy herbs on the planet and how it is inexpensive compared to its substitutes, and how so much money is being put into a war against marijuana, even though it is an unwinnable

The documentary uses logos to back up the claim that while tobacco causes “an average 430,000 deaths per year” and alcohol causing “well over 85,000 deaths a year”, marijuana has zero recorded deaths in human history. That’s pretty effective since the documentary shows a lot of the marijuana propaganda describing how dangerous marijuana is. The documentary also uses logos to compare the prohibition on alcohol to marijuana, and this is effective to viewers because it is a real life example of something that once was considered a public enemy and is now legal and can be found very easily, appearing on many a street corner. This likens the ignorance of a past age to ignorance of society around us, which is effective in making conclusions as to why marijuana is illegal in the first

The documentary explains how hemp was such a large industry and “the first marijuana law to exist in the United States was a law ordering farmers to grow hemp”, and then changes to how marijuana became a feared drug. The documentary explains how reefer madness in the 1900s depicted blacks as criminals who smoked weed and disrespected whites in articles and newspapers, which led to the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act which made it illegal to grow cannabis without federal stamps, which were never sold which in turn made all forms of cannabis illegal. Then, the government changed its take on marijuana and decided that “it didn’t make people violent at all, it made them pacifists” and this was bad in times of war, so the government decided marijuana was illegal. This is change in position is a key use of logos and ethos because it is illogical to have a substance illegal for the very opposite reason it was illegal in the first place, and it plays on ethics because the government is just using marijuana as a tool to sway citizens to support the war. The delicate balance of an interesting story and the lack of logic in why marijuana is illegal are very persuasive tools in the