Madison Tullos Ms. Hollingsworth Composition I 26 Sept. 2012 Drug Abuse Rising Ritu Malhotra and Sean M.

Brandle begin their article Are You Controlling Fraud and Abuse in Your Prescription Drug Program? by expressing facts about problems associated with people who overuse medicines. The authors provide statistics and researched evidence in their essay to articulate to the audience why prescription drug abuse is imperative. They discuss side effects of drug overuse, how people can prevent the overuse, and how doctors should address the problem. This article uses credible medical sources to ensure its reliability; these reliable sources include statistics and a petrifying emotional appeal the reader feels when the authors talk about the death of drug addicts. The authors decide to elaborate on ethos in this article first because it is the strongest point discussed in this article. Ritu Malhotra and Sean M. Brandle show ethos by using credible sources such as medical sources from trusted doctors and researchers that provide credibility. The reliable information used in this article comes from reliable medical sources which Malhotra and Brandle chose. The writers use medical sources such as the Drug Enforcement Administration and the 2009 Centers for Disease Control Survey to report that one in five high-school students had taken a prescription drug (such as Oxycontin, Percocet, Adderall, Ritalin, or Xanax) without a doctors prescription (26). The authors say drug abuse has turned into such an elaborate problem in younger people and not only with the older generations. With

Tullos 2 the information coming from the doctors and researchers medical sources, the writers create credibility so that readers will not have any curiosity to decide whether this article is true or not. After including information about which drugs were most commonly overused by addicts, authors included specific amounts of money in the article to use logical facts. Malhotra and Brandle show logos proficiently in this article by using logic to inform readers of money wasted by prescription drug addicts. The authors include estimated prices to show the readers the astronomical price of drug fraud. Malhotra and Brandle say that the primary type of prescription drug fraud-costs all U.S. health insurers an estimated $72.5 billion a year (27). The bulky number is included because the author wanted to use facts that would draw attention from the reader. Since the author includes a specific amount of money, it helps the reader to notice the amount and the fact is more trustworthy. The number of deaths reported by businesses makes the audience feel an emotional appeal. While writing this article, the authors use of pathos attempts to attract the audience and make them feel a sense of sorrow. The author uses depressing statistics to persuade the reader to feel gloom and empathy toward people who overdose on drugs. Malhotra and Brandle state that; In almost one-third of U.S. states, accidental drug poisoning now causes more deaths than traffic accidents (27) and that attracts the reader by making him or her feel grief. These statistics show that the drug abuse problem is all throughout the country. The authors try to make the readers feel a sense of melancholy because they want the audience to realize what can happen to prescription drug addicts. Malhotra and Brandle use a great variety of data and statistics, medical sources, and information to make the author feel a sense of sorrow while reading this article. As the authors go into detail about the ethos used in this article, they use the element of credible medical

Tullos 3 sources to tell information about situations with drug overdose. Logos is applied by using facts telling how much money is wasted every year due to drug usage. Readers feel a sense of emotional distress, which tells about pathos, when reading about the deaths per year because of certain prescription drug overdoses. The authors do an outstanding job of keeping the readers attention by including all tools and using elements of each. Word Count: 641

Tullos 4 Works Cited Brandle, Sean M. and Ritu Malhotra. Are You Controlling Fraud and Abuse in Your Prescription Drug Program? Benefits Magazine. July 2011. Web. 26 Sept. 2012