SAN FRANCISCO (CNS) — Legalizing marijuana brings risks to children, safety and health, especially in low-income communities, said four Catholic leaders in the Bay Area.
“The cost in lives is unacceptable. The parallels with other substances like tobacco are too striking. And the impact on our young people too uncertain,” said Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of San Francisco in urging voters reject Proposition 64 to allow recreational marijuana.
“The effects are not fully understood and the proposed standards are arbitrary,” he said in a statement and in a column in Catholic San Francisco, the archdiocesan newspaper. “Legalization of marijuana in California will have to be followed with years, if not decades, of education in temperance in its use, let alone the time needed for exact legal standards, which are currently completely lacking for marijuana, to be put into place.”
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Initiatives to legalize recreational marijuana go before voters in at least five states — Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada. Legalizing medical marijuana is on the ballot in Arkansas, Florida, Montana and North Dakota.
Arizona’s Proposition 205 “sends a message to children and young people that drug use is socially and morally acceptable. As people of faith, we must speak out against this effort and the damaging effects its passage would have on the children and families of Arizona,” the state’s Catholic bishops said in a statement released by the Arizona Catholic Conference, their public policy arm.
In Massachusetts, the Catholic bishops issued a statement opposing the Ballot Question 4 to legalize marijuana there. They referenced a report from the National Institute of Drug Abuse that said marijuana is the most commonly used illicit drug in the United States.
“Its widespread use and abuse, particularly by young people under the age of 18, is steadily increasing while scientific evidence clearly links its long-term damaging effects on brain development,” the bishops stated.
“When marijuana users begin using as teenagers, the drug may reduce thinking, memory and learning functions and affects how the brain builds connections between the areas necessary for these functions. Marijuana’s effects on these abilities may last a long time or even be permanent,” the bishops quoted the National Institute of Drug Abuse as saying.
When their state and the nation as a whole are currently waging a losing battle against opioid abuse, they said, “our attention must not be diverted from (that) health crisis, nor do we want to add fuel to it by contributing to the use of other illegal/illicit/proscribed substances through the legalization of marijuana.”
In California, Archbishop Cordileone in his statement cited the doubling of traffic fatalities related to recreational use of marijuana in the state of Washington, which legalized cannabis in 2012.
“Increased road fatalities alone should give us pause. Incredibly, California voters are being asked to allow the widespread use of marijuana despite the fact that, unlike alcohol, there is no reliable standard for measuring the effect marijuana has on a driver,” Archbishop Cordileone said.
He pointed to the sharp rise in emergency room visits “primarily among toddlers who consume marijuana edibles” in Colorado, where voters approved legalization in 2012.
“And this spring, right here in San Francisco, 19 people went to the emergency room when they unknowingly ingested marijuana-laced candies during a celebration,” Archbishop Cordileone said.
Separate statements echoing the same reasoning for opposing legalizing pot were issued by Bishop Michael C. Barber of Oakland, San Francisco Auxiliary Bishop William J. Justice and Cardinal William J. Levada, former archbishop of San Francisco and a former Vatican official.
“We already hear daily reports about an ‘epidemic’ of drug use in this nation, with its negative consequences on family, work and health,” Cardinal Levada wrote. “The jury of qualified experts seem to find marijuana an entry level drug that, in far too many cases, can lead to even stronger and more dangerous drugs.”
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“Experimenting with the health and welfare of our children, the potential impact on road safety, not to mention the medical and legal implications that are far from resolved, seem to me to take us in a dangerous and unwise direction,” he said.
“Proposition 64 does not create ‘safe paths’ for our children,” said Bishop Barber. “In fact, as is unfortunately being demonstrated in Colorado’s experience, it does just the opposite. Dare we risk the learning potential of children in school, or even before they enter school, from casual or inadvertent exposure to marijuana advertising and marijuana itself? How many children will fail to achieve their potential because of this law?”
Bishop Justice urged voters to reject the proposition because those who would be most severely impacted will be “our brothers and sisters in underprivileged neighborhoods.”
“The legalized use of recreational marijuana will create circumstances that will no doubt create economic winners and losers, but the impoverished will be some of the victims of this measure,” he said. “Instead, the entrenched systemic problems that will result in poor communities will be extremely difficult to overcome.”
In Colorado, many marijuana growers locate their operations in low-income neighborhoods, he said. The bishop also cited a rise in the number of homeless people in that state, saying the “jobless and homeless ‘marijuana migrants’ have traveled from outside of the state so they can obtain marijuana at a cheaper cost and continue its use without the fear of legal repercussions.”
“As usage increases, poor communities — as well as other economic groups — will also experience more failed drug tests, missed days at work or school, and even loss of employment,” Bishop Justice said.
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Everyone has pretty made up their mind, it is a social issue. Our lives have dealt with this since the 60s, and with different filters.. Most young people don’t listen to Church people, period. I do not get honest answers when I ask what age is “ok” to smoke. But the truth seems that most teens arn’t to eager to be potheads. And even potheads see child abuse as preteen smoking. There is a HUGE firewall built up over medical marijuana. It will never be separated entirely as a placebo for potheads. In the end, it is hard to see an individual who gives his faith in Christ to smoke pot, but for a long time priests smoked cigarettes without rancor. People may get mildly addicted. But that is our Society.
Drugs are drugs after all is said and done. Unregulated drugs are going to be abused by the weak and ignorant souls who choose to abuse them. THIS should be seen as a call for help, not ignored by leaders and citizens who have accepted the responsibility to love their neighbor and have the capacity to truly care for others.
I hope it is legalized throughout the country. I know many people who lost their homes, families, livelihoods from alcoholism and drug abuse, but I never met anyone who ruined their life because they smoke too much weed.
Catholic leaders have committed themselves to a campaign of lies about cannabis. Instead of lining up with the Establishment and threatening those who choose to use cannabis with impoverishment, the Church should acknowledge the fact that it is among the safest of drugs in common use, far safer than tobacco, alcohol, prescribed medicines, and most over-the-counter medications, e.g. Any substitution of cannabis for other drugs redounds to an improvement in public health. Cannabis reduces the consumption not just of opioid drugs, but many others as well, and this is why entrenched interests pushing more dangerous drugs oppose its legalization. The Catholic Church’s position on cannabis is fundamentally immoral.