‘You may not be interested in politics,” goes the old saying, “but politics is interested in you.” The Church has rediscovered this truth many times in the last few years: clashes with governments over marriage, the sanctity of life, and religious liberty have simply become unavoidable.
Since all those issues are still very much alive, it might seem unnecessarily gloomy to ask what clashes might be next. But recent events in the United States suggest that debates over drug legalisation may be around the corner.
In July 2016, four bishops in Arizona signed a statement opposing the proposed legalisation of drugs in the state. Legalisation “sends a message to children and young people that drug use is socially and morally acceptable”, they said.
Bishop Thomas Tobin of Rhode Island has written an essay, “Nope to Dope”, against a similar piece of legislation in his state. Neither bill has yet been voted on.
But the issues here are more complex than those involved in, say, the redefinition of marriage. That is suggested by the actions of another group of bishops – those in California – who taken “no position” on drugs law – that is, let each bishop decide.
That states can pass laws on drug legalisation means that issues have moved more quickly in the US than in Britain. But the question is frequently raised – although few senior politicians have ever really made the case for drug legalisation. (The Lib Dems, for what it’s worth, support cannabis shops on the high street.)
There are two separate questions here: is drug use ever moral, and can its legalisation ever be supported by Catholics?
The Catechism’s words are severe. “The use of drugs inflicts very grave damage on human health and life. Their use, except on strictly therapeutic grounds, is a grave offence.”
The preceding article of the Catechism calls for temperance in using alcohol, tobacco, and food. But this article implies that when it comes to drugs, no such thing as temperance is possible: except for medical pain relief, one puff is too much.
The Thomistic philosopher Taylor Marshall argues that drugs obstruct human reason – which is the highest faculty of the soul. That includes even softer drugs such as marijuana. “It doesn’t just provide a buzz (like drinking two beers),” Marshall writes. “I grant that it may not be as bad as being stone cold drunk, but it’s still a ‘high’ that inhibits the intellect.” Alcohol, Marshall argues, “is different, because its effects can be graduated.”
That debate is likely to continue. But even if drug use is always and everywhere wrong, that does not settle the legal debate. (Malicious gossip and adultery aren’t prohibited by law, after all.) Here the argument more closely resembles that within the secular world. The legalisers say that, if drugs weren’t illegal, the trade would no longer be in the hands of gangsters. They argue that crackdowns on drug use have done little except increase the prison population.
Opponents of legalisation say that, if drug use is no longer against the law, it will be much harder to resist the lure of drug addiction.
Moreover, they say, it will hurt the poorest most – witness Colorado, where cannabis was recently legalised. Use rose by 22 per cent, and the social effects – serious addiction and drug-related crime – were concentrated among the poorest. The bottom 19 per cent of earners (those on less than $20,000 a year) make up 28 per cent of users. Legalisation, say opponents, is a luxury good paid for by the poor.
Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith, contributing editor of the Catholic Herald, disagrees. “That crime associated with cannabis use has increased, is because cannabis use has increased in Colorado,” he says. “This is to be expected in the short term, but will one hopes decline as the novelty wears off. The real cause for encouragement is the huge saving in police time and resources as they no longer have to police something that had long been unpoliceable.”
So where is the Church likely to come down? Stephen White, of the Ethics and Public Policy Centre in Washington DC, says drug abuse is a huge issue. “But the question of how civil authorities ought best address these problems hardly permits of an easy or obvious answer.
“This raises the further question of whether the Church should spend its ‘political capital’ – if you’ll pardon the expression – on such questions at all, given more pressing threats to the family, to life in the womb, and to religious freedom, to name a few.”
It will, says White, be up to bishops to decide whether drug legalisation is worth opposing.
There are two possible models for the Church’s response. One is on religious freedom, where the Church never abandoned its doctrine but decided to insist on it less forcefully.
But the other is assisted suicide, where a fashionable law (one which has made great progress on the West Coast of America) threatens to privilege the wishes of the well-off and powerful over a threat to the welfare of the most vulnerable.
That debate will play out very differently in, say, Mexico than in Britain. But it may not be far away.
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