In a ten-to-twelve page research paper, design a research methodology to address the problem statement written in Step #2. In Step #3 you are NOT reporting on the work of others related to your topic – that’s what you did in Step #1. In Step #3, you are designing your own research methodology to address the question you have posed in Step #2.

Running head: PROBLEM STATEMENT 1

PROBLEM STATEMENT 2

Problem Statement: Marijuana Use as a Public Safety Issue

Name:

Date: 09-13-2020

Problem Statement: Marijuana Use as a Public Safety Issue

Drug and substance abuse is a serious public safety in many countries. For United States a country with a high purchasing power and resources issues of drug and substance abuse are astounding and transcends across the demographic. In 2014, it was reported by national institute of drug abuse (NIDA) that 74% of all American adults have at one time used drugs and 48% are active drugs users of drugs with 18% of them using illicit drugs (Mead, 2019). The national survey on drug use and health (NSDUH) asserts that drug and substance abuse is costly to the American economy and population. Apart from the country losing $740 billion to drug related issues like expenditure to mental health illness and low work productivity due to addictions and life style changes caused by illicit drug use, drugs and substance has serious implication on the American public safety (Subritzky, Pettigrew & Lenton, 2017). Accordingly, approximately 19.7 million American age 12 years and above battle assorted substance disorders caused by addiction to various illicit drugs. Among the 19.7 million, 75% suffer from substance disorders assorted to abuse of alcohol and 35% is assorted with illicit drugs. According to Makin et.al (2019) 8.5 million adults aged 18 and above and 1.2 million adolescents aged between 12 to 17 years suffer from both mental health disorders and substance use disorder or occurring disorders due to use of substance.

Although empirical evidence in the past has shown that alcohol and smoking abuse has been the main public safety issue to deal with. The trend of substance and drug use is slowly shifting to illicit drug use and especially psychotropic drug like marijuana. According to NIDA (2018), More than 11.8 million American young adults reported to have used marijuana in 2017. This is an increase of 18% compared to 2013 to 2015 periods. This clearly indicates that indication that the marijuana abuse is on fast and steady increase in the country and timely bomb that would engulf the future generation just as alcoholism in these generation (Mead, 2019). The NIDA report shows that Marijuana use is widespread among adolescents and youth adults. A study by the monitoring the future indicate that high school and middle school student are the most prevalent people that use marijuana. A comparison of statistics indicate that the current use of marijuana trends are all time high compared to any time of illicit drug use boom in America history. Though many argue that use of marijuana has medicinal purpose and increase memory capacity among the youths, its adverse effects are costly as seen in recent youths’ interaction among themselves and society (Subritzky et.al, 2017). Rampant mass shooting in school and colleges have been clearly been linked to illicit drug use among the young. Evidently, increased peer gangs and other delinquent behaviors are attributed to increased use of illicit drug among the youths of adolescent stage. Additionally, arson and increased suicides are also negative implication of illicit substance abuse and especially marijuana in adolescents and young adults (Makin et.al, 2019).

With the current trend, the youth in America have a flimsy future filled with more chaos than what we witnessed in the recent past. Schools and other social amenities that our children have been freely going to interact are increasingly turning in massacre field of drugs illicit drug burdened youths. It is therefore important to shift the guns to a rising menace has engulfed the America youths and that is the use of marijuana. Understanding marijuana use, effects and its implication to the American population is very important, however to effectively mitigate marijuana and other illicit drugs related public safety issues it is important to understand the motivating factors and the integrating environmental behaviors that influence marijuana use.

References

Makin, D. A., Willits, D. W., Wu, G., DuBois, K. O., Lu, R., Stohr, M. K., … & Lovrich, N. P. (2019). Marijuana legalization and crime clearance rates: Testing proponent assertions in Colorado and Washington State. Police quarterly, 22(1), 31-55.

Mead, A. (2019). Legal and regulatory issues governing cannabis and cannabis-derived products in the United States. Frontiers in plant science, 10, 697.

Subritzky, T., Pettigrew, S., & Lenton, S. (2017). Into the void: Regulating pesticide use in Colorado’s commercial cannabis markets. International Journal of Drug Policy, 42, 86-96.