I wouldn’t go THAT far, but if it’s legalized it will be a national tragedy. Drug abuse will skyrocket.
As a former addict, pot IS the gateway drug. Period. No, not everyone who smokes pot becomes an addict, but all of us who are addicted to harder drugs started off by smoking pot in basements.
I grew up in the 1970s, and many of my friends were heavy users of marijuana (back when the THC level is nowhere near what it is now). The ones who continued to use it, without exception, either graduated to other, heavier drugs (which is what happens when marijuana is introduced to an addictive personality type), or at best, accomplished absolutely nothing with their lives. Some are still living with their mothers, and at an age when most should be thinking about retiring, are still talking about the big plans they have, if they ever get off the couch and stop playing on the XBox.
Some other issues a Catholic should think about:
We live in the country that invented the concept of Supersizing a Big Mac. YOU may be able to handle marijuana use, but is there anything in American society and culture of which you are aware that leads you to believe that the majority of Americans will be able to handle a drug that is de facto legal with any measure of responsibility?
We live in a community. Even if you are able to handle marijuana use, many, many, many others are not. People who start to love marijuana more than they do their kids (and yes, they do) drive intoxicated and lose their jobs and get some jail time. We all have to pay for social services to support them and their wives and kids. People with pre-existing anger issues (surprisingly, not everyone turns mellow on marijuana) slug their wife or whip their kids and society (and the police, and Catholic Charities) has to jump in. People who would rather hang out with their buddies and get wasted ignore their kids, who turn to other sources for love and acceptance. People who should know better than to place themselves in morally compromising situations do so because their inhibitions are reduced, and wind up pregnant, raped, and/or with an STD. Pregnant women find that dope is so important to their lives that they toke up while pregnant, and the pre-natal damage creates the kids with ADD/ADHD and other behavioral problems that cause even more costs to the school system for which we all have to pay, and as the class learns at the rate of the slowest learner, the educational system gets more stressed. People with lowered impulse control show up late for work, sass the boss, and get fired. Their spouses and kids pay the cost and so do you and I, just so they can continue their little Cheech and Chong fantasy lifestyle.
While the arguments over the possible health effects of marijuana use go back and forth (as marijuana advocates can’t admit there could ever be
any kind of ill effects from using their drug of choice), it would be hard to argue that the most common method of ingestion of marijuana, namely smoking, is almost certain to be unhealthy - drawing burning smoke into your lungs can’t be good for you. Is it sinful to put your health at risk, especially if others rely on you?
We also live in an interconnected world, and the fact that Americans fuel such a heavy market for marijuana has created an organized crime network that has destabilized our neighbor to the south and caused the brutal murder of thousands of people - many of them our fellow Catholics. Every child of a murdered Mexican police officer, journalist, judge, or prosecutor is the responsibility of American marijuana users, by creating a market and a demand, whether they are particular about the source of their marijuana or not.
One could argue that “if only marijuana were legal and regulated and taxed, why the Mexican cartels would collapse!” Unfortunately, this overlooks several facts:
- Brutal people who make their profits from drugs do not give up so easily. They have made too much profit and too many enemies to start pounding their AK-47s into plowshares.
- People who commit crimes do not like to dilute their profits by paying taxes.
- The states that have legalized “medical marijuana” aren’t too picky about requiring labs to identify sources of supply. Legalized “medical” marijuana in California has been a huge source of income for the cartels.
- It is unlikely that we will ever fully legalize marijuana. There wlll always be a market that the cartels will fill. The profits they have made from marijuana to date has enabled them expand into other profitable criminal ventures, like political corruption, protection rackets, money laundering, human trafficking, prostitution of children, ransom kidnapping, and even more dangerous drugs - meth, heroin, cocaine. They are also expanding their customer base among the young in Mexico. Whether or not you feel that all this could have been avoided by making your drug legal, you still have to answer for the human cost.
- The PRI, the Mexican political party that formerly struck deals with the narcotraffickers for mutual profit, is now back in power. (They are also, incidentally, historically anti-Catholic. The PRI party was started by Plutarco Elías Calles, the president whose anti-Catholicism caused the rise of the Christero movement.)
I haven’t even gone into the environmental damage caused by illicit marijuana plantations, or the destruction of the southwestern ecosystem by all the trains of marijuana smugglers tromping through a pretty fragile environment.
Glad you beat addiction, Rascalking. In absolute agreement with you on this.
