Is it ethical to sell marijuana?

[cornbread_r2]

No. It is not at all my position that it might be permissible. As usual, you’re twisting words. I never said that. I’ve said every time that marijuana use is objectively evil.

I didn’t misrepresent your position – I even cited it. Where I erred was in assuming that you might agree with the CBCP’s statement.

There is no such thing as “medical use.” That’s nothing more than a euphemism employed by people as an excuse to get high.

Someone else might say that there is a possible medical use for it. I say that those people are wrong.

I don’t know your credentials in the field of medicine, but unless they’re at least equal to those of the medical professionals who have found efficacious therapeutic uses for marijuana, I’m going to defer to their expertise.

The only possibility to which I do admit is the potential that there might be some legitimate medications derived from the plant. Just as many other medications are derived in part from one plant or another.

Marinol is a derivative of marijuana that was approved by the FDA for the treatment of several medical conditions and has been legally sold everywhere in the US since 1985. It is basically purified THC, the primary psychoactive component of marijuana. While Marinol lacks some of the properties of THC, it retains one that many people cite as the primary reason for objecting to medical marijuana – it gets people high. For all intents and purposes, Marinol is marijuana in pill form.

No. It is not an assumption. It is based on the simple fact that “we all know what that question means.”

Before this thread was four posts old, other posters were making the distinction between the morality of recreational and medicinal use, so apparently not everyone knew the OP was asking exclusively about recreational use.

And further, no matter how much you deny it, marijuana use is illegal under federal law. Therefore, there is no place in the United States where it can be legally sold.

I’ve never denied that marijuana use/sale/possession is illegal under federal law. What I have held is that the federal government’s lack of enforcement of those laws relative to medical marijuana has constructively decriminalized marijuana for that use.

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If this issue was as straightforward as you seem to think, then why hasn’t the USCCB – or, AFAIK, any bishop in the 23 states where medical marijuana is legal – released any direction on the subject? I would think that an act that was clearly immoral, unethical and objectively evil – and one in which Catholics are either likely participating or confused about – would warrant some attention.

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As I’ll likely just start repeating myself, I’m probably not going to participate any further in this thread.

Thanks for the discussion.