Drug abuse is the use of any substances that effect the abnormal functioning of the body, outside of legal frameworks that may exist to regulate their administration and for purposes other than those for which they were meant. Drug abuse may result from a raft of many reasons, whose nature could either be economic, political or social. This paper will seek to explore the subject of drug abuse as resulting from social problems, as per the works of Barkan.
In the year 2012, Colorado voters passed an initiative aimed at legalizing marijuana particular for use among adults of ages 21 and above, following which the state congress ratified a decision allowing the medical use of marijuana while upholding classification of marijuana as a Schedule I controlled substance (Barkan, 2016) . Focusing on the need to reform medical marijuana laws within the state, the Congress established that marijuana is a highly dangerous drug and even though the distribution of the drug under a clear legal framework would greatly diminish the health risk associated with it, total use of marijuana had to remain highly unacceptable. It has been confirmed that marijuana retains a higher potential for abuse, but it is currently accepted for medical use in the US. The law, however, remains framed against the illegal use of marijuana since the drug is highly addictive after long-term use. Long-term use of marijuana has been argued to cause compulsive drug seeking and abuse. According to Barkan, (2016) , marijuana is one of the most commonly abused illegal drugs throughout the US. It is considered one of the most widely used illicit drug in the US. By the end of 2011, approximately 18 million citizens of ages as low as 12 years, were reported to use marijuana. This represents about 7 percent of the US population. Marijuana drives illicit drug use trends in the US; hence the legalization of marijuana use has raised concern across the nation based on the long-term effect of the drug.
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The Federal government holds the position that the use of marijuana should be placed under rigorous clinical trial in addition to scientific scrutiny applied by the Food and Drug Administration department of health and human services. This is in order to ensure a higher standard of safety and efficacy for the American public. In US, marijuana production, sale and use are possible under the strict legal framework. Studies have shown that legal marijuana has recently turned to be one of the fastest growing industries. Therefore research has shown that, if this trend continues to the rest of the 50 states, then marijuana would become larger compared to the organic food industry (Barkan, 2016) .
Research done by Arc View Group established that the market for legal cannabis in the US grew significantly by 74 percent in the year 2014 from $1.5 billion to $2.7 billion. Sales of marijuana have however remained banned in most states. Focusing on the nature of social influence, it has been established by Thombs that, the use of marijuana serves four core functions in the society including to facilitate social interaction, offer release from various social obligations, promote group solidarity and to reel against the society’s values
Growing up, almost all Americans are often faced with a decision to make on whether or not to engage drug use for purposes of leisure. Their decisions, often times, are strongly influenced by their grounding in religion (Barkan, 2016) . The media exercises a strong influence on individual drug use and abuse since it wields a lot of power in as far as the release of information, which potentially directs public discourse on the matter of drug intake is concerned. Social influences such as friends, role models, and adults play a major role regarding influencing US citizens into using marijuana. There are certain personal characteristics such a rebelliousness towards societal consensus on such matters as drug abuse and extensive personal awareness of drug use, which contribute to drug abuse. There is a limited social and communication skill which has also been reported to increase the susceptibility to using marijuana (Barkan, 2016) .
In conclusion, marijuana is commonly used in the urban areas, social structure and this implies that social inequality plays a critical role in the use of this drug. The majority of the people using marijuana are poor and of color and these points out that poverty and racial inequality has a role to play in abusing marijuana. Those adolescents with loose bonds with families and school are at a higher risk of abusing marijuana compared to those children from homes with stronger family bonds. Peer influence has also been reported to affect the likelihood of an individual using this drug and most often begin at adolescence the time which peer influence is vital.
References
Barkan, S. E. (2016). Social problems: Continuity and change .
