Editor's Note: ERLC has placed Sunday, March 16, on the SBC Calendar of Events as Substance Abuse Prevention Sunday. These articles are designed to equip pastors, small group leaders, and other church members with information about the rising tide of normalizing marijuana.
Jump to:
Marijuana's Potency and What Churches Can Do
Moore: "What does the normalization of marijuana do to people?"
Marijuana Legalization Initiatives by State
Marijuana's Potency and What Churches Can Do
by Barrett Duke
President Obama's recent comments about marijuana are very troubling. Having smoked marijuana myself for many years as a teenager and young adult, I can say that the president's claim that marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol is an inadequate comparison.
Both alcohol and marijuana are dangerous. To say one thing is less dangerous than another doesn't mean very much if both things are extremely dangerous.
Claiming alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana is essentially a distinction without a difference. Marijuana is associated with a long list of physical and psychological problems.
Further, the Justice Department's own statistics indicate marijuana is associated more often with other criminal behavior than any other illicit drug. In a 2002 Department of Justice survey of convicted inmates in jail, 14 percent reported using marijuana at the time of their offense—more than cocaine/crack at 11 percent. In addition, marijuana is acknowledged by millions of users and multiple studies as the gateway to even more destructive drugs.
Unlike alcohol, it is difficult to intake marijuana in moderate doses; it is almost immediately debilitating upon the first intake. Alcohol impairs the user at practically any level of use as well, but its strongest effects require higher levels of usage.
Marijuana is more powerful in smaller doses. This is even truer today than it was back when the president and I were smoking it. The higher potency levels of today's marijuana compared to those of the sixties and seventies are well documented. But even when the president and I were smoking marijuana, it didn't take much to thoroughly incapacitate a person.
The president is correct to maintain the current administrative policy toward marijuana as a Schedule I drug. It is a dangerous substance that will cause additional harm if the federal government relaxes its position. The president's latest comments about the dangerous nature of marijuana are damaging enough. He would be better served to look more closely at the current facts about marijuana than to depend on his own experience.
Millions of lives are at stake in the debate over marijuana. I agree that we need to make sure we aren't locking up young adults with hardened criminals for recreational marijuana use. Instead, we need more effective deterrent and rehabilitative programs. I agree that we need to address any racial disparity that exists in current drug enforcement policies. But making marijuana more available or reducing the penalty or stigma associated with its use is not going to help those using it now. Instead it is going to result in more use and more associated problems.
What churches can do
As our country continues to engage in the debate about marijuana, we must remember that the young people in our churches are listening and watching. We must make sure we help them understand the importance of personal purity and the dangers of marijuana and other drugs. Here are seven things a church can do to help keep their youth away from marijuana and other dangerous substances:
1. Teach what the Bible says about proper treatment of our bodies. Our bodies are God's creation, and for those in Christ, they are the temple of the Holy Spirit. As such, everyone, including young people, should do their best to keep themselves healthy and sober.
2. Teach young people their worth in God's eyes. They should be made aware that their lives matter. They should be taught that God has a plan for their lives and that they should seek His plan.
3. Encourage adults in the church to practice abstinence toward alcoholic beverages. Young people have trouble distinguishing the difference between alcohol and marijuana use. To simply say one is legal and the other isn't is not persuasive to youth curious about marijuana. This certainly won't be much of a deterrent now that some states are legalizing it.
4. Hold Christ-centered substance abuse awareness seminars. Parents should be made aware of the signs of substance abuse and be equipped to minister to a child who has fallen under its power. These seminars can also help young people and church members understand the dangers of substance abuse.
5. Develop wholesome, enjoyable activities and ministries that offer young people in the church good alternatives to non-Christian venues. Make sure there is a strong emphasis on discipleship in these as well.
6. Promote ministry opportunities for young people in the church that can help them focus on service to God and others rather than self. Teens are looking for ways to make their lives count. These activities can help them develop direction and purpose in their lives.
7. Remind youth of the Lordship of Christ. Christian teens must be made aware of the reality that their lives are not their own. Having trusted Christ as Savior and Lord, they must put Him first, above all else.
Moore: "What does the normalization of marijuana do to people?"
by David Roach
Photo courtesy of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
Even so-called "medical marijuana," which is legal in nineteen states and the District of Columbia, poses ethical problems, Russell D. Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said in a podcast released January 23.
On one hand, it is not a sin for an ill individual to use marijuana prescribed by a physician, Moore said. He cited Proverbs 31:6, which references giving alcohol to someone who is dying or in great distress.
"There are all sorts of mind-altering drugs that are given to severely ill people in order to correct their illness, and sometimes even to put them out of consciousness. I would think of morphine, for instance. I think that's ethically all right," Moore said in the Questions and Ethics podcast.
Yet medical marijuana, contrary to the claims of its advocates, is not primarily a drug prescribed for people in unbearable pain or on the verge of death, Moore said. Quoting a CNN article, he said only 2 percent of those prescribed marijuana in Colorado suffer from cancer and only 1 percent from HIV/AIDS. Ninety-four percent cite "unspecified pain" as the justification for their marijuana prescriptions. The average user of medical marijuana in California "is a thirty-two-year-old white man with no life-threatening illness but a long record of substance abuse," Moore said, quoting CNN.
Medical marijuana "is not something that is being given to people with terminal cancer, fighting off in a hospice sort of situation those last stages of pain," Moore said. "It's something that is being given very indiscriminately with a substance that has a long cultural history in this country of essentially inducing a kind of immediate drunkenness, which of course is prohibited in Scripture for a believer."
Moore said he would vote against medical marijuana if he lived in a state where it was on the ballot. "It's not because I don't have compassion for people who are dealing with difficult illnesses," he said, "nor is it saying that some terminally ill person who takes marijuana at a doctor's order is personally sinning. I don't think that's the question. I think the question is: What does the normalization of marijuana usage do to people?"
Moore continued, "Wherever we have medical marijuana coming in, we have marijuana usage going up. That is not a good thing. I think that most of us can agree marijuana doesn't do anything good for a work ethic, for someone's life, and the people who tend to get hurt in all of these situations aren't those who are in the cultural elite, who often are the ones who are normalizing these things culturally."
Moore added that legalization of recreational marijuana also is ill-advised. "Just as big tobacco was an industry that had a cheap product that was able to hook people in, we have the same sort of industry involved here with marijuana," Moore said. It is "simplistic" to argue that legalization would eliminate the black market and reduce use. "I don't think that bears up in terms of history," he said.
Marijuana Legalization Initiatives by State
