Legalizing marijuana is a public debate that has grown in conversation over the past ten years. Marijuana is such a popular public issue because it affects society in much more than one dimension. From the medical field to criminal implications to tax revenue potential, marijuana is a drug that reaches into many depths of American society. Through the functionalist perspective, it is easy to see how the illegality of marijuana is a dysfunction to society, and how its legality, in medical and recreational usages, has the potential to be a function to society. As an illegal drug, marijuana has led to increased incarceration rates, particularly of black males, without substantial decrease in drug usage. As a medicinal drug, marijuana has been shown to treat a number of diseases. However, as a legal recreational drug, there is a possibility that marijuana could be somewhat harmful to society, which will not be known until further research is done on the physiological effects of the drug.
The illegality of marijuana is a dysfunction to society. Since the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) of 1970 was signed into law, marijuana has been
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Up until very recently, regulations by the federal government has made research on the use of marijuana nearly impossible. Because marijuana is classified as a Schedule 1 drug, it is difficult for scientists to get research approved and to obtain the drug for research purposes (Carroll 2015). There is not a lot of research supporting long-term use of many of the typical drugs approved for chronic pain, like opioids. Typical painkillers are extremely dangerous, and result in more deaths than marijuana does annually (Carroll 2015). Based on the little research that has been done, its seems that the benefits of marijuana as a replacement for conventional painkillers seem to outweigh the potential harms for patients currently prescribed these