It seems that the legislature of the Philippines is edging towards the legalisation of marijuana for medical purposes. This has naturally sparked a debate, and the Church has become involved, as you can read here. The head of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, Archbishop Socrates Villegas, has made some robust and clear statements on the subject, which are carried in the report, and all of which I agree with. But there are one or two things that could be said in addition to what the Archbishop has to say.
First of all it is probably now not particularly controversial to say that people who are terminally ill may have recourse to marijuana if their doctors think it may have a beneficial effect. I have no specialised medical knowledge, but common sense dictates that if someone is dying of cancer then they should be allowed to drink alcohol and smoke tobacco, if this will make them happy. The usual rules of what is good for you or not are usually suspended in periculo mortis. That said, I doubt that marijuana has any truly medical benefits, beyond making the patient relaxed and happy. I would not endorse those who may think that the illegality of marijuana deprives humanity of an important medicine.
The Archbishop makes two important ethical points:
“Substance abuse and drug dependence are wrong, and any measure that makes abused or habituating substances within easy reach of potential abusers and dependents is morally wrong.”
“The roots of addiction and substance abuse cannot be addressed by law-enforcement and penology alone. There are community and social causes, and these have to be attended to.”
Many moral statements can seem to be a statement of the obvious, but given that our moral sense is so blunted, and our moral reasoning is so frail, it is useful to consider these two statements in some depth.
Yes, drug abuse is wrong, very wrong. Thanks to drug abuse, countless individuals have destroyed themselves, families have been ruined, and whole nations laid waste by the production and trade in illegal drugs and the private armies that protect both. Drug abuse has caused perhaps more heartache than anything else apart from war. To those tempted to take drugs, I say, please don’t do it. I am still haunted by the funerals I have done for young people who have destroyed themselves with drugs and left grieving parents behind them.
Clearly, it must follow that encouraging drug abuse in any way is morally wrong. That makes perfect sense, and could sound like a ringing endorsement of the current situation in many countries – that is, prohibition. But it is nothing of the sort, as the Archbishop’s second ethical principle makes clear.
Law enforcement, and sending people to jail (“penology”), are not sufficient tools for dealing with drug addiction, the Archbishop states. Again, who could differ? Drug addicts need treatment, and the communities where drug addiction is rife need urgent social intervention. Of course, here we have a problem. The success rate for treating drug addicts is disappointingly low, and as for dealing with the social problems of drug addiction, we do not seem to be on top of that problem either. But what we should ask ourselves is this: has law enforcement and sending people to jail actually made the problem worse?
If drug abuse were a relatively rare phenomenon, perhaps the law as currently applied might work. But given the widespread nature of the problem – and the police usually say that most of their work is drug-related – given the simple fact that we are failing to contain the problem, and that drugs are freely available in all our prisons, might it not be a good idea to examine the question whether we can combat drugs in some other way, and with greater success?
We have fought the war against drugs, and we have lost it. We need to try something else. Sticking to the current policy seems counterproductive. Legalisation, regulation and taxation of drugs currently illegal – that is giving them the same status as alcohol and cigarettes – may, ironically, make drugs less freely available and widely abused than they are at present.
The usual criticism directed at those of us who want to see all drugs legalised, regulated and taxed is that we somehow do not mind drugs being “freely available”, as if they were not so already. But the opposite is true. If the drug trade were taken out of the hands of criminals, drug consumption would fall, and there are many studies that provide evidence for this.
But to get back to what is under discussion in the Philippines, namely the legalisation of marijuana for medical purposes. Some may be unwilling to admit it, but this is Trojan Horse legislation, a sort of canary down the mineshaft. Several countries have legalised or decriminalised (not the same thing) marijuana already (and several American states too): despite this, the sky has not fallen in. Indeed it seems to have been beneficial. After the legalisation of marijuana, there is clearly a next stage, once this test case has proved the case for legalisation. Slowly we are moving towards a different approach to harmful recreational drugs. It is about time.
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