Marijuana

[Guest]

alcohol is one of the strongest drugs out there.

[dairygirl4u2c]

2290 The virtue of temperance disposes us to avoid every kind of excess: the abuse of food, alcohol, tobacco, or medicine. Those incur grave guilt who, by drunkenness or a love of speed, endanger their own and others' safety on the road, at sea, or in the air.


i forgot that passage, which effectively says it's okay to drink and smoke, just not in excess. so to equate alsochol with drugs, is misguided, at least as far as the catechism uses the terminology. i'd argue common sense says alcohol is a drug... but i'm not a catholic and i don't have to defend it creating the distinguishments that booze is okay recreationally but that drugs use is gravely wrong... not leaving 'alochol is a drug' as an option.
so it's not just the bible and jesus who says it's okay, it's the CC.
that verse about booze is right before the verse about drugs.

we definitely shouldn't be taking the route of 'alcohol is bad too'.

Edited January 29, 2011 by dairygirl4u2c

[Guest]

You make good points I won't argue that. But alcohol is a drug there is no way around that. And its a drug that has killed a lot of people and destroyed a lot of lives.

Edited January 29, 2011 by Guest

[Sternhauser]

[quote name='dairygirl4u2c' timestamp='1296272131' post='2206214']
2291 The use of drugs inflicts very grave damage on human health and life. Their use, except on strictly therapeutic grounds, is a grave offense.[/quote]

"The use of drugs (and again, alcohol and nicotine are drugs) inflicts very grave damage on human health and life. Is this statement objectively true?" If it were, then alcohol would be prohibited. Is the statement a matter of faith or morals? Are Catholics bound to believe that marijuana, or small doses of cocaine inflict "very grave damage" on human health and life?

~Sternhauser

Edited January 29, 2011 by Sternhauser

[dairygirl4u2c]

yeah pot was wrong to so many conservatives, now it's not so bad. this came with an overwhelming amount of people who use it, and the rhetoric of permissibility from the tea party.
even not long ago, it was more wrong than not to conservatives. i suppose this board is largely younger folks, where the trend is more notible sooner than with the general population.

it makes one wonder though, about those conservatives who eat sleep and breath anything conservative only, and that's all they talk about-- cookie cutter conservatives, that is. (think socretes)
doesn't it make one wonder if they are artificially being conservative too now on many issues? that today's conservativism probably didn't happen to just get it all right, as if that's likely?

should we go back to when pinball was immoral, for instance?
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/toys/4328211-new

just a rant

[rachael]

I still don't understand who had the bight idea to rank pot as a schedule one drug, along with heroin. Cocaine, however, is lower.

http://www.umsl.edu/~keelr/180/classify.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Substances_Act

[Lwangaman]

[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1296159098' post='2205184']
Sorry, I meant domestic to mean "within the country". :D Forgot about the other sense.


Our culture has evolved to such that in the short term, a lack of drinking age laws would be a bit chaotic, but I believe that in the long term these laws do nothing but harm. (I also don't think these laws are moral.)
[/quote]

I've been living in Italy for the past 15 years. In Italy there is no legal drinking age, though it is unlawful to sell alcohol to minors (which is usually 18 years old).
They are a little more lax about this, and since things like wine are part of the culture they don't pose a big problem. It's quite normal to have wine at every meal.
I must say that when I go back to the United States I immediately sense the uptightness about this issue. I went to the supermarket to buy a bottle of italian wine to share with my folks at dinner, and even though I've got a big beard and am obviously not a minor the young cashier asked me for my id to be sure that I was of age. I didn't happen to have my license on me and I couldn't buy the bottle of wine. In Italy that would be just downright ridiculous.

I work with teenagers a lot and sometimes they do have the "expectation" of turning 18 so they can buy alcohol, and they don't always live this very maturely or responsibly, but I would say that gaining maturity and responsibility towards the use of alcohol comes also from the context that you grow up in. If you grow up seeing that it's normal to enjoy a cup or two of wine at each meal without abusing it, that it's alright to enjoy a shot of whiskey with a group of friends but just a shot, you may have a more "serene" relationship or attitude towards these aspects of social living. Use but not abuse is the key. I think it is useful to have laws regulating selling alcohol to minors, but then again the whole social context (that starts from family and then friends) is really key.

As for smoking substances, well that's a little more difficult... While a cup of wine at a meal can be normal in a culture, that's not usually the case for smoking substances. I suppose that in some cultures mixing a little bit of marijuana is not uncommon, for example in arab cultures where they use a narghilè (or shisha or hookah) I hear that they might add a bit of pot in the tobacco. But even that is not the "norm", I've shared a narghilè myself with a group once in Israel a couple years ago, they brought them to the tables together with the meal at the restaurant, but they just use fruit tobaccos (caramelized apples, cherries, etc.) I have never made use of any narcotic substance and I don't think it's worth losing control of yourself. I don't think it should be a "normal" or daily thing to do in any culture, and if starts to be so then maybe you need a law to inhibit the usage. It's not an easy question, because the law is supposed to be "educational" even though it can often turn out to be the opposite...

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='Lwangaman' timestamp='1303520543' post='2231271']
I've been living in Italy for the past 15 years. In Italy there is no legal drinking age, though it is unlawful to sell alcohol to minors (which is usually 18 years old).
They are a little more lax about this, and since things like wine are part of the culture they don't pose a big problem. It's quite normal to have wine at every meal.
I must say that when I go back to the United States I immediately sense the uptightness about this issue. I went to the supermarket to buy a bottle of italian wine to share with my folks at dinner, and even though I've got a big beard and am obviously not a minor the young cashier asked me for my id to be sure that I was of age. I didn't happen to have my license on me and I couldn't buy the bottle of wine. In Italy that would be just downright ridiculous.

I work with teenagers a lot and sometimes they do have the "expectation" of turning 18 so they can buy alcohol, and they don't always live this very maturely or responsibly, but I would say that gaining maturity and responsibility towards the use of alcohol comes also from the context that you grow up in. If you grow up seeing that it's normal to enjoy a cup or two of wine at each meal without abusing it, that it's alright to enjoy a shot of whiskey with a group of friends but just a shot, you may have a more "serene" relationship or attitude towards these aspects of social living. Use but not abuse is the key. I think it is useful to have laws regulating selling alcohol to minors, but then again the whole social context (that starts from family and then friends) is really key.

[/quote]
Your country is one that I always mention in debates about drinking laws. The North American 'drinking culture' is basically ruined for the time being because it's evolved to be so uptight, as you said, as well as tending towards appalling binges once they turn 18 or 19 or 21 depending on where they live.

[Jesus_lol]

Pot should be as legal as tobacco and alchohol is, and there is no argument, moral or otherwise against that, that holds any water.

[ThePenciledOne]

[quote name='Jesus_lol' timestamp='1303665207' post='2231839']
Pot should be as legal as tobacco and alchohol is, and there is no argument, moral or otherwise against that, that holds any water.
[/quote]

Alright.

[Ice_nine]

[quote name='ThePenciledOne' timestamp='1303671009' post='2231879']
Alright.


[/quote]

There really isn't though. I sometimes use marijuana to help me sleep, (I've ALWAYS had sleeping problems) and/or just to chillax when I'm hanging out with people. I don't smoke it though. my lungs can't handle it.

Now I've never been drunk so I can't compare to that, but I have been sleep-deprived, to the point of having semi-hallucinations, and I can tell you that I have felt way way way way way WAY more outside my head from not sleeping than from being high.

To me I find it really insane that it's still classified as a schedule I, meaning by definition "The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States." I mean [i]cocaine[/i] isn't even schedule I, and that drug is a demon. Yet marijuana is demonized even though it can help suffering cancer patients who are going through chemo, has antibiotic properties, and a myriad of other health benefits. There are actually legal drugs that in my opinion are way crazier (someone mentioned salvia, hell even nutmeg can make you trip)

But the stigma remains, quite possibly because of a deeply ingrained racism that just perpetuated itself over time.

I used to think mj was BAD BAD BAD but did some research and it wasn't hard to see there wasn't much substance behind the claims.