Posted on 06/20/2014 9:08:47 AM PDT by xzins
Pope Francis condemned the legalization of recreational drugs as a flawed and failed experiment as he lent his voice Friday to a debate that is raging from the United States to Uruguay.
Francis told delegates attending a Rome drug enforcement conference that even limited steps to legalize recreational drugs "are not only highly questionable from a legislative standpoint, but they fail to produce the desired effects."
Likewise, Francis said, providing addicts with drugs offered only "a veiled means of surrendering to the phenomenon."
"Let me state this in the clearest terms possible," he said. "The problem of drug use is not solved with drugs!"
Francis has described drug addiction as evil and met addicts on several occasions. When he was archbishop of Buenos Aires, he devoted much of his pastoral care to addicts.
To reject illegal drugs, he said, "one has to say 'yes' to life, 'yes' to love, 'yes' to others, 'yes' to education, 'yes' to greater job opportunities.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Don’t tell me what I mean, especially something as goofy as what you speculated.
I have sure known plenty of people who avoid or stopped using drugs, or associating with drug users, because of the laws.
Your second remark is just too silly, I don’t think you can see life outside of being an actual user.
What kind of person lives in such a fog that he thinks that normal people don’t care about being busted for drugs and discovered to be drug users, and that normal people are being given business cards by drug pushers.
“I disagree. Strong liquor isn’t in the hands of kids very easily because it is controlled....not illegal.”
Yes, control instead of outlawing is better on all fronts. An open, legal, low-tax market for adults takes away the insane profits from criminals (like the bootleggers) and takes them out of the business.
It also makes it pointless for a legitimate business to risk future profits by selling to kids. Drug dealers in an illegal market don’t care who their customers are and will sell to anyone.
“If you make everything a candy store and open it to everyone, then kids are more likely to enter the candy store. Beyond that, it’s a moral issue. We do NOT allow our kids to be intoxicated. That’s not what childhood should be about.”
Kids are even more likely to want something they can’t have and will pay someone of age to get it for them. Humans seem to be genetically wired to go against their elders’ wishes at a young age and try things out on their own. Make a button that says “don’t press” and 90% of people will. The “forbidden fruit” phenomenon is very real.
We need to do a better job instilling morality and knowledge in kids. However, laws do NOTHING in these cases besides making government and criminals richer. A real-world relate-able drug education program would cut drug abuse in half but I don’t think the powers that be truly want that...
The inherent harms of drugs were a minor or non-consideration? Really?
I think you pick up on the spiritual hazards to situations like this one. And that’s probably half the battle of keeping one’s spiritual sanity in a church with a stiff institutional hierarchy. If the high officials of the church would concentrate more on helping their church’s Christians be more Christian, they wouldn’t need to be advising the world on what to do. Their laypeople would be advising the world and making it credible because Christ’s spirit would be rendering the advice through them. I have no doubt Francis means well, but he’s not in a place that most of the world can easily relate to. If Francis advised the lay members of the church how to live the life of Christ, then THEY would in turn show the real stuff to the world.
Many may have simply switched intoxicants.
You certainly are being a champ at berating.
Do you ever read your own posts, and does this mean you are going to start another series of personal attacks about your personal grudge?
How long will this one last?
I have sure known plenty of people who avoid or stopped using drugs, or associating with drug users, because of the laws.
It isn’t a very complicated sentence to read.
I have sure known plenty of people who avoid or stopped using drugs, or associating with drug users, because of the laws.
Then I can only say that in my opinion most Americans are not as dullwitted as the people you've known.
Ah, he who doles out the personal attacks is so sensitive to getting them huh?
People have switched intoxicants due to this.
Why do you stalk me with your your personal grudge?
That is a trait that is almost entirely of you libertarians at FR.
Try to focus on the thread topic.
Methinks the laddie doth protest too much!
Why did the laws make them suddenly stop if the laws stayed the same and very few users are caught? They probably didn't truly want to use in the first place. Please educate me on their mentality as I have never met anyone like this.
I'm extremely social and have been to dozens of cities and countries all over the world. I've ranged from dirt poor to wealthy. Never have I met a person in my life who didn't use because of laws. Most people I know don't use but it is always their personal decision. Not even one person mentioned laws, ever, in any conversation.
“normal people are being given business cards by drug pushers.”
Maybe average people won't get handed cards but they can just as easily find any drug they want by asking a few people. All it takes is a little social skills. I know countless people who can find any drug they want within hours of landing in a new city.
I admit living as a NYC 2%-er is not “normal” but I grew up poor and drugs were just as easy to get back then. The only difference is the price and the clothes the dealers wear. Perhaps the cops harass the poor more nowadays.
This is exactly, precisely right. Exactly, precisely right. Even "canonically" right. I mean right all the way through.
That's why, for example, the USCCB should be disbanded. The "political policy" part has largely cannibalized the rest of it, and it's a particularly irksome form of clericalism.
It isn’t dull witted to avoid trying pot, or to stop using it, or to cut off social association with post users, to avoid problems with laws and the resulting damage to reputation and careers, and employment.
You really can't imagine someone avoiding pot because it is illegal, or succumbing to temptation and enjoying it but deciding against breaking the law to make it a habit, or not hanging out with drug users because of the work they do, or the aspirations they have?
You haven't known young people who saw that breaking the law for drugs would interfere with a chosen field of work, or truck drivers and GIs who quit because of the laws, or professionals who realized the risk and ended that youthful carelessness?
There shouldn’t be anything wrong with a group of bishops dealing with challenges to Christian faith that pop up in their country. But I agree, the political pronouncements almost turn it into a circus. And it would irk me as much if, say, the SBC got topheavy about this. I’d take that as a sign that there was too little activity at the lay level.
Let the church do Christianity well, and the salt and light will pour out. Like a hymn (which I don’t know whether it’s current in Catholic circles, but they do borrow from evangelical Christendom) goes — let the lower lights be burning, send a gleam across the wave, some poor fainting, sinking sailor you may rescue, you may save.
Three posts, and each one purely personal and not related to the thread at all.
Why don’t you just get into the libertarian thing and get it started since, that is what got you obsessed with me.
If you want to give advice that is going to be actually listened to, rather than you chuckling at how wise you supposedly were, then knock off the berating.
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