Marijuana Policy: Decriminalization Of Marijuana

There are two options for the focus of your essay.  You need only pick and write on one. 

A.)  Marijuana Policy: What sort of policy should the United States government adopt in regards to marijuana? 

B.)   Post Legalization Treatment of Drug Offenders: Assuming that the law in more states or the federal government change, making marijuana legal.  What should happen to persons under punitive control for marijuana-related crimes? 

Your essay should have several parts, each of which you will be required to answer thoroughly.  Please clearly indicate when you are addressing a specific part (by saying “The normative principle I am relying on is…” and “the empirical claims I am using to reach this conclusion are…”). 

1. What sorts of policy/policies should be adopted as regards your chosen topic?  Be as specific as you can about the actions or policies that you advocate.  Keep in mind that any claims that you make here in your thesis will need to be supported by parts 2 and 3.  You can think of this as the introductory paragraph to your essay.
2. State clearly and explicitly what normative principle or principles you are relying on to justify this answer.  The natural thing to do here is to adopt one of the principles at the center of the moral theories that we have covered so far in the semester. For example, you could adopt the Principle of Utility (also known as “The Greatest Happiness Principle”), or the Universalizability Principle.  But it is not necessary that you choose one of these, and you can instead use a narrower principle, like the Harm Principle that we just went over, or you can construct your own general principle (like a broadly consequentialist one).  But if you choose to do to this, it makes the next part that much more important.
3. Explain and defend the normative principle/principles that you use. 

Explanation: (This is the most important section of part 3).  You must explain your moral principle.  This involves clearly elaborating on the concepts within the principle that need to be clarified in order for a novice to know how to apply the principle.  If you borrowed your normative principle from a theory, one way to do this would be by explaining the theory.  If you instead chose to adopt a broadly consequentialist principle, then you must say which kinds of consequences are the ones that matter. 

Defense: In defending your principle, you need state why we should accept your principles as good ones to use in general or for this specific topic.

Apply your principle to the topic at hand.  (This ought to be the longest section of your essay by far).  This will involve making empirical claims about the topic, offering evidence for those claims, and then explaining how those claims apply to your principle.  Essentially, the empirical, topic specific claims you make are the claims that together with your normative principle lead to the conclusion.  I will stress again that the empirical claims need to be supported by evidence.