Vatican City, Jun 26, 2017 / 04:34 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican’s top personality on social justice issues has voiced his concern for the increased demand for drugs, including recreational marijuana, saying debate on the plant’s usage doesn’t take ethical concerns into account.
In a June 26 letter on the occasion of the U.N. International Day against Abuse and Illicit Trafficking of Drugs, Cardinal Peter Turkson lamented the fact that narcotics “continue to rage in impressive forms and dimensions” throughout the world.
“It is a phenomenon that is fueled – not without concessions and compromises on the part of institutions – by a shameful market that crosses national and continental borders, intertwined with mafias and drug trafficking,” he said.
Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, Cardinal Turkson noted that compared to the recent past, drugs have now become “a consumer product made compatible with everyday life, with leisure activity and even with the pursuit of well-being.”
Pointing specifically to cocaine, he noted that the drug is linked to the spread of heroin, which at 80 percent represents the highest number of new requests for opioid-related treatments in Europe.
However, despite the high numbers for heroin and opioid treatment requests, the cardinal noted that “the most commonly consumed recreational drug is cannabis.”
The current, raging international debate on the use of the drug “tends to overlook the ethical judgment of the substance, by definition negative as with any other drug,” he said, pointing to the current focus on its possible therapeutic uses.
This, he stressed, is “a field in which we await scientific data to be validated by monitoring periods, as for any experiment worthy of public consideration.”
According to September 2016 report from the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, which compared marijuana-related statistics from previous years in Colorado to data from 2013-2015, the first years after the legalization of recreational marijuana in the state, the prospects of the drug’s increased use are grim.
Not only have the number of marijuana-related deaths, hospitalizations and traffic accidents increased since the drug’s recreational use was legalized, there has also been growing concern over marijuana-related crime and a decrease in the IQ of youths who use it.
But before making a firm decision on the issue that is perhaps based on various prejudices, Cardinal Turkson said it would be better to first “understand trends in the use of cannabis, related damages and the consequences of regulatory policies in the various countries.”
It’s especially important to recognize the factors “which push the illegal market to develop products intended to affect patterns of consumption and to reaffirm the primacy of the desire that is compulsively satisfied by the substance.”
On this point, concern has grown for many that the recreational use of marijuana is often a gateway for youth to become addicted, and eventually move on to other drugs such as cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, or meth.
In addition to voicing his concerns on marijuana, heroin, and the dangers of using them to improve one’s “wellbeing,” Cardinal Turkson also pointed to the risks of other addictive behaviors such as gambling, saying its legalization, even in cases aimed at unmasking its criminal managers, “exponentially increases the number of pathological players.”
“Moreover, taxation by the state is to be considered incompatible from an ethical standpoint and contradictory in terms of prevention,” he said, adding that the development of “models of intervention and adequate monitoring systems, associated with the allocation of funds, is highly desirable to tackle the phenomenon.”
The cardinal noted that as the array of addictions continues to diversify, “indifference and at times indirect complicity in this phenomenon contributes to diverting the attention of public opinion and governments, focused on other emergencies.”
Plans to fight the increasing demand for drugs often collapse, he said, explaining that the present-day state of addictions shows “gaps in planning, policies and prospects,” which in turn is a sign of “sluggish progress” in the face of the drug market, “which is highly competitive and flexible to demand, and always open to novelties such as recently-created, extremely powerful synthetic opiates, ecstasy and amphetamines.”
“It is precisely the growing and widespread consumption of ecstasy that may serve as an indicator of how the use of illicit substances has now spread into everyday areas of life,” he said, adding that it could also be an indication of how the ecstasy user no longer identifies with the heroin addict, but “with the new profile of the user of multiple substances and alcohol.”
Because of this, strategies of intervention can’t depend solely on reduced damage, “nor can drugs still be considered as a phenomenon that is collusive with social disorder and deviance.”
Rather, damage reduction “must necessarily involve taking on board both the toxicological aspect and integration with personalized therapeutic programs of a psycho-social nature, without giving rise to forms of chronic use, which are harmful to the person and ethically reprehensible,” the cardinal said.
Cardinal Turkson stressed the importance of not seeing the addict as a problem to be solved or as being beyond the hope of rehabilitation.
To consider people as irrecoverable, he said, “is an act of capitulation that denies the psychological dynamics of change and offers an alibi for disengagement from the addict and the institutions that have the task of preventing and treating.”
“It cannot be accepted that society metabolizes drug use as a chronic epochal trait, similar to alcoholism and tobacco, withdrawing from exchange on the margins of freedom of the state and the citizen in relation to substance use,” he said.
The cardinal recognized that there is no singular cause of drug use, but rather a panorama of causes including the absence of a family, various social pressures, the propaganda of drug dealers, and even the desire to have new experiences.
“Every drug addict has a unique personal story and must be listened to, understood, loved, and, insofar as possible, healed and purified,” he said.
“We cannot stoop to the injustice of categorizing drug addicts as if they were mere objects or broken machines; each person must be valued and appreciated in his or her dignity in order to enable them to be healed.”
For the cardinal, part of this process means finding effective means of prevention, beginning with education.
“The scenario which we must all face is marked by the loss of the ancient primacy of the family and the school, the emptying of authority of adult figures and the difficulties that arise in terms of parenting,” he said, stressing that this is not time for “protagonism,” but rather for “networks” that are capable of “reactivating social educational synergies by overcoming unnecessary competition, delegation and forms of dereliction.”
“To prevent young people from growing up without care, bred rather than educated, attracted by ‘healing prosthetics,’ as drugs appear to them, all social actors must connect and invest in the shared ground of basic and indispensable education values aiming at the integral formation of the person.”
In this regard, educational aspects “are crucial,” he said, especially during adolescence, when youth are more vulnerable, and at the same time curious and prone to periods of depression and apathy.
Youth look for the “vertigo that makes them feel alive,” he said, quoting Pope Francis. “So, let us give it to them! Let us stimulate all that which helps them transform their dreams into plans, and that can reveal that all the potential they have is a bridge, a passage towards a vocation.”
“Let us propose broad aims to them, great challenges, and let us help them achieve them, to reach their targets. Let us not leave them alone.”
In order to combat the ephemeral happiness of addictions, a “creative love” is needed, Cardinal Turkson said, as well as the presence of adults capable of both teaching and practicing healthy self-care.
“A spiritual vision of existence, projected towards the search for meaning, open to the encounter with others, constitutes the greatest educational legacy that must be handed down between generations, today more than ever,” he said.
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China will eat you.
This.
China already ate US, and is taking really huge bites in the past weeks. That US reality those that are suppose to be looking out the countries best interest, are too busy selling us out.. for their own gain.
Its the drum role of, is President Biden going to start looking our for the people, as Kennedy tried. Or continue to sell US out?
President biden sold out 47 years ago buddy. Put your head between you legs and kiss your a.. goodbye. You speak as if buden just entered politics. He has been selling the country out since the 70s. Wake up
I agree with his sentiment but someone forgot to mention the 500 giga tonne gorilla in the room – The hegemony of the United States of America whose sole goal is to rape the planet for anything and everything it can buy or sell. Good luck trying to convey your message of minimalism to that obese, excessive ignorant island.
“Rape the planet”, really? Do you drive a vehicle, do you own clothes, do you eat food, do you have a house, do you have a phone, do you’s can continue. Give up all of what you and your family consumes in the name of not raping the planet.
Right. Except that the United States isn’t an island, it’s part of a continent called North America. So who’s the ignorant one here?
Nothing better than the guy in the gold plated house lecturing about the poor. He should follow God’s word and sell his riches.
The pope, I trust you understand, does not own the riches of the Vatican, etc. In fact, in fairness to Pope Francis, he probably owns very little. Now, a more worthwhile line of criticism would be to ask, “What competence or expertise does Pope Francis have in economics?” And so forth.
Carl no one said that Pope Francis is an economist.
I do not think you would criticize Jesus for his Sermon on the Mount which called for social justice and looking out for the needy.
Isn’t that what a Pope is supposed to articulate.
Carl no one said that Pope Francis is an economist.(sic)
Yet he himself believes he is one as evidenced by that which he allowed to be published under his name in Evangelii Gaudium and Laudato Si’ as only two examples among many.
A yet more worthwhile line of thinking would be this:
Popes must be Catholic.
Francis is not Catholic.
Thus Francis is not pope.
Well, Francis has Jeffry Sachs to tell him how to use abortion to make sure we have fewer poor people in the world.
I do not think Pope Peter had access to the wealth and splendor that Pope Francis has. Not did our first Pope have body guards.
He probably did not even have rosary beads or a crucifix.
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And that’s the issue. I personally may own much more than Pope Francis, but I don’t live in anywhere near the comfort. I have no security system, and if I come down with Covid or cancer, no hospital or doctor of note will leap at the chance to cure me.
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They are not called “Princes” for nothing.
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I do not begrudge him (them) their comforts, or would not, but they clearly have no clue how wealth is created, how poverty might be lessened.
Remember when Popes used to talk about Jesus and Mary?
You remember the simple tales Tod to you as a child. They are still told to children.
Now you are older you need to navigate the bigger more complex stories.
New world order pope . .give away the wealth of the catholic church first..
You first, Francis
What might be said—perhaps competently—about augmenting daily stock market data/quarterly progress reports with a wider-angle business perspective, sometimes referred to as the TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE: prophet, people, planet? A few (not all) tutors and their discussion points:
At least parts of mankind are demonstrably at risk of a self-inflicted “tragedy of the commons” (from ecologist GARRETT HARDIN, 1968). Today the personal ecological footprint involves a layered web of often distant resource uses—land, water, air, and food chains.
ST. AUGUSTINE connected expansive passions and a finite world: “the passions are more easily mortified finally in those who love God, than satisfied, even for a time, in those who love the world” (in Henry Paolucci, ed., The Political Writings of St. Augustine, 1962).
In his Liechentstein Address (1993), SOLZHENITSYN remarked on technological society and the need for “self-limitation”—“in an economic race, we are poisoning ourselves.”
Two years earlier, ST. POPE JOHN PAUL II also called for “important changes in established lifestyles, in order to limit the waste of environmental and human resources, thus enabling every individual and all the peoples of the earth to have a sufficient share of those resources.” (Centesimus Annus, 1991 n. 54).
What is the possible alliance for shared action among the three monotheistic world RELIGIONS? E.g., Christian and Jewish revelation—“[The LORD made the earth] not creating it to be a waste, but designing it to be lived in” (Isa 45:18). (See Michael A. Barkey, ed., Environmental Stewardship in the Judeo-Christian Tradition: Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant Wisdom on the Environment [Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, 2000]. Islam (a natural religion) proclaims—at least for the umma or House of Islam—the reality of the common good and of property as a shared good.)
In Mater et Magistra (1961) ST. POPE JOHN XXIII noticed that nature has only “almost inexhaustible productive capacity” (“almost”, not “inexhaustible” as under Pope Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum). And, likewise, it was with an eye on rising per capita resource consumption, that ST. POPE JOHN PAUL II counseled “above all a change in lifestyle (and) models of production and consumption . . . (and) structures of power . . .” (Centesimus Annus, n. 58).
ST. POPE JOHN PAUL II and Ecumenical PATRIARCH BARTHOLOMEW issued a “Joint Declaration on Articulating a Code of Environmental Ethics” stressing five goals: (1) mindfulness of future generations, (2) the priority of Natural Law and the non-utilitarian use of science and technology [Veritatis Splendor! 1993], (3) stewardship and solidarity beyond exaggerated [!] ownership, (4) a variety of roles and [!] responsibilities, and (5) the need for trust beyond legitimate controversy (Origins, CNS Documentary Service, June 20, 2002).
What would a more reflective and robust market (solidarity and subsidiarity, both, with neither eclipsed by the other) actually look like—beyond (a) the narrow and short-term quantitative fixations prevailing today AND EQUALLY BEYOND (b) POPE FRANCIS’ countervailing and self-acknowledged “rhetorical poetry”?
It would make more sense for the Pope to encourage the poor to learn from economists instead, so they can pull themselves out of poverty.
A lot more. But that’s not Francis’ M.O. MT verbiage is. Reams of it. Worst Pope we’ve ever had.
Johann du Toit,
That sounds about right but it would have to be economists with good track records. Some economists fail as badly as the rest of us to see what’s coming next.
It’s ashame when religious leaders embrace fundamentally flawed and evil dogma and ideology, becoming useful idiots for the tyrants.
Alternative view on papal events: canon212 dot com.
To my concluding QUESTION: “What would a more reflective and robust market (solidarity and subsidiarity, both, with neither eclipsed by the other) actually look like…?”
With some adjustments, maybe the Mid-West DUST BOWL of the 1930s will not be repeated in the desertification of coral reefs (related to our food chains) in the 2030s, and in the less preventable Sub-Sahara?
Maybe Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics will not pull the rug out from under of family-wage jobs and FAMILIES (papal prayer intention for this November)?
And, happily, with a perspective of centuries and nod to the better side of INNOVATION (“Technocracy”?), open-pit copper mines already have been at least partly replaced by fiber optics and miniaturized/wireless communication. The short-lived buffalo hunter, beaver pelt and finite-coal mentalities offer additional clues.
And, likewise to be purified, maybe the extermination of miniature (!) UNBORN CHILDREN—the moral crisis of “preeminent” priority (USCCB)—as exploited by the Abortion Industry (another “AI”!), will itself be terminated? This, rather than subsidized by the government (!) and exported overseas by Planned un-Parenthood profiteers.
As for the “rhetorical poetry” of Laudato Si—maybe there can be better rhyme and coherence as to WHETHER we can “reverse” (n. 170) OR only “adapt to” (n. 175) our/or nature’s (?) climate change?
(In either case, between Ice Ages the sea level was 4-6 meters deeper than it is now, while both underdeveloped Bangladesh and overdeveloped New York City have an average elevation of only 10 meters above sea level.) Bishop Barron quotes the mythical Mother Nature of eons and eras past: “I have fed species greater than you; and I have starved species greater than you.” And “my oceans, my soil, my flowing streams, my forests—they all can take you or leave you.”
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2015/08/11/mother-nature-is-one-unreliable-lady/
Lapsing into planetary superlatives, what is the MORAL DIFFERENCE, if any, between short-term and direct genocide, and the long-term and indirect triage (stock market “economics”?) in marginal geographies of possibly vulnerable and “starved” populations?
Consumerism keeps everyone working.
Oh yes, isn’t needless toil and pursuit of “things” grand?
vs. what? Bored poverty and starvation?
Why hasn’t the Pope clarified his remarks about homosexuality? Please clarify the church’s stance on these sins that cry out to God.
Because he’s a coward and a liar.
The Poor are the real tabernacles where Christ resides. Economists have a lot to learn from the Christ residing in the poor.
I can’t believe this guy even sees the irony of telling his ‘flock’ to eschew the better things in life from…. The Vatican, that broken down old property of renown. Any shanty dwellings in there, Frank?
The pope seems to want a return to the middle ages where most people hated being alive.
I don’t know about that. Some of the Middle Ages sound pretty good to me. Some parts don’t ,but as I understand it they had many more days off work than we do today. Lots & lots of holy days observed back then.