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There may be purposeful uses for marijuana that make sense, but getting stoned would be a violation of personal responsibility. Remember, Jews, Christians, Muslims, none are supposed to get drunk, intoxicated, and yet that is essentially the goal in the use of pot.

Your basic point in your reply is a distinction between "use" and "abuse," neglecting to mention that these are terms whose distinction is so plastic that they don't serve any useful distinction. Remember that as a Christian or a Jew there is no prohibition against the use of alcohol for the pleasurable aspects of alcohol. That is, neither is a teetotaler religion, though there are some teetotaler Christian sects (and even ancient Israel had a sect whose members touched nothing of the grape, neither wine, nor grape, nor raisin). Both stress that one should not be given to much wine, not to no wine. The Old Testament thanks God for "wine that makes glad the heart of man". The prohibition is on using it to the point that it disrupts life. It's at this point that someone could call it abuse.

For that matter, if doing something for the pleasure of doing it is abuse, you cannot logically draw a circle around some things (alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, caffeine, kava, etc.) but not around other practices done simply for their pleasurable aspect (hobbies and sports, taking a Sunday drive for no other reason than seeing the color change in the fall, sexual intercourse when you're not trying for a pregnancy, having a sandwich or a bowl of ice-cream if you have any extra weight, you know, "comfort food").

You're basing your argument on definitions that are really cases of special pleading for the purpose of ending up exactly where you already wanted to be.

You wrote:

“Your basic point in your reply is a distinction between “use” and “abuse,” neglecting to mention that these are terms whose distinction is so plastic that they don’t serve any useful distinction. Remember that as a Christian or a Jew there is no prohibition against the use of alcohol for the pleasurable aspects of alcohol.”

Intoxification is not pleasure, but abuse. That is what Christians, Jews and Muslims believe.

“The prohibition is on using it to the point that it disrupts life. It’s at this point that someone could call it abuse.”

Is Phelps’ life disrupted right now? I would say it is. Your own argument is working against you.

“For that matter, if doing something for the pleasure of doing it is abuse, you cannot logically draw a circle around some things (alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, caffeine, kava, etc.) but not around other practices done simply for their pleasurable aspect (hobbies and sports, taking a Sunday drive for no other reason than seeing the color change in the fall, sexual intercourse when you’re not trying for a pregnancy, having a sandwich or a bowl of ice-cream if you have any extra weight, you know, “comfort food”).”

Completely illogical. Intoxification is the problem. That is what pot is used for criminally in this country and that is exactly why Phelps used it. You can continue to create what are essentially straw men arguments, but that won’t change. Deal with that point or simply start an argument with someone else.

“You’re basing your argument on definitions that are really cases of special pleading for the purpose of ending up exactly where you already wanted to be.”

No. We all know what Phelps was doing and why - especially since he admitted it. Case closed.

Stop making excuses for illegal drug use.