The United States of America has many social problems affecting millions of Americans
Social Problems
Introduction: The United States of America has many social problems affecting millions of
Americans. One of these social problems is drug abuse, and this is the problem that I choose to
address in this paper. Drug abuse is also commonly referred toassubstance abuse is the use of a
drug in large amounts or in ways that are harmful to the person taking the drug as well as others.
Drug abuse is a type of substance-related disorder (Sullivan, 2016). The main reason as to why
this social issue is relevant to this course is that drug abuse has been identified as one of the major
social ills that are affecting America andmany other countries across the world. Drug abuse affects
the health of the abusers and other people in a negative manner. Governments across the world
have to spend billionsof dollars on treating abusers to heal them from their conditions and make
them productive members of society.
In the United States, the year 2019 there were estimated that about 30 million Americans
were struggling with substance addictions and this is what led many of them to start abusing the
drug they were addicted to (Velasquez, Crouch, Stephens, & DiClemente, 2020). It is also
important to note that it was only one person in each ten get professional help in a bid to help them
overcome their addiction and abuse. The United States government, on the other hand, spent about
$650 billion in treatment and rehabilitation efforts(Velasquez et al., 2020). This issue is also
significant in the world with statistics showing that the world over, there are about 250 million
people that are struggling with drug abuse (Velasquez et al., 2020). In many developing countries
in Asia and Africa, many people lose their lives because the governments in these regions cannot
afford to spend billions of dollars in treating people that are suffering from this social issue hence
the high numbers of deaths among drug users in these countries.
Problem Description: From the figures and statistics discussed in the introduction, it is pretty
evident that drug abuse is a serious social issue that has been influenced by the more or the same
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