On the Cannabis Question

Massachusetts Question 8—regarding shutting down the legal recreational market for marijuana—is a matter of not just protecting the innocent and guilty alike but protecting the human soul.

Like many so-called secular questions, the cannabis question is actually religious in nature. Yet many tend to think of proper policy in a way that excludes Providence. Truth is known in terms that exclude its Creator.

In Question 8 on the Massachusetts ballot November 3, the state is at least given a chance. Streets, parks, and summer decks now announce themselves loudly with a sort of ferocious ease. Before the Commonwealth is the decision to do away with recreational dispensaries, end home cultivation, leave medical cannabis standing, and reassert the moral prerogative. Adults could still possess small amounts. They would no longer be invited to buy it.

Rarely is the phrase “weed kills” uttered. But it does. Slowly. In its pretensions toward enlightenment, it can cast a curse. In the expansion of sensory pleasure that accompanies the substance, things seem more real than they are. With sufficient time, that reality is forced to dominate because that which is undistorted becomes a problem.

What has become of our new lotus flower? Its mutation knows increasingly extreme strains, often obvious in their effect. The odyssey is one of fatigue, failure, and ultimately—hopefully—one of triumph. With marijuana announcing itself to all, one now has to discern more precariously. The memory of who one is can disappear, one’s contentment can be contaminated, and one’s true home can become lost to the fog. More than one life can go the way of tragedy.

The siren call of drug use portends a winnowing of disorder. The rehabs, sober living houses, and anonymous meetings are full of those destroyed by the allure of pure pleasure. The master of ceremonies continues to be the devil. In destroying the very concept of evil, we succumb to it.

The issue with marijuana is the issue with temptation. It is a disservice to holiness. In positioning the poison as medicine, or as just another way to consecrate fun, the moment loses its divine framing. If God requires a certain comportment, if purity is more than mythological vestige, then the drunkenness of which St. Paul speaks (albeit in a different form)—and that legalization encourages—is a Calypso who no longer promises immortality. The intrigue of the next inhale is the pursuit of the lost, damned, and distressed.

It is a truth too often unacknowledged that comfort can take form as a vengeance. The tragedy of the moment is the idea that sensuality is the achievement of a certain salvation. But love is not synonymous with pleasure because pleasure can owe its allegiance to wrath. The light of the fire is thus darkened.

The state, in reflecting the will of the people, is bound to err. If voters were as wise as they dreamed, mass legalization of recreational cannabis would have been terminated as an idea before arriving at our doorsteps. The madness of addiction, mental disturbances, and the severe consequences for intelligence in developing brains should not be encouraged.

The unfortunate reality is that in defining freedom without limits we limit our sanity. Nihilistic decline has stampeded the breaches by whispering liberty as the code word. Responsibility sits befuddled, festering in a confusion intent on the destruction of souls.

It does not take a theology doctorate to realize all signs point to God. In seeking marijuana, what do we find? We find misalignment with the sacred, misalignment with God. To quote the Catechism:

The use of drugs inflicts very grave damage on human health and life. Their use, except on strictly therapeutic grounds, is a grave offense. Clandestine production of and trafficking in drugs are scandalous practices. They constitute direct co-operation in evil, since they encourage people to practices gravely contrary to the moral law. (2291)

New York City should not be Amsterdam, nor should Boston. Yet they slouch with a gusto. The hearts of these cities have found themselves suggestible to false understandings. Love is often in search of more love, and it is quick to redefine itself in terms that dispute its origin. The easy out is pleasure, the hard, meaning. Without mortification, asceticism, and the paradoxical expressions of divine love through self-sacrifice, we participate in a doomed enterprise.

Therapeutic language can be a waste of our prosperity. Certain things should be defined with a distinction matching their devilry. Marijuana is one among many. In this case, America has wandered East and lost itself. The intellectual vacantness associated with the drug, the deadening of the user, is best left unglorified. Reason is a gift susceptible to deformity. In its self-destruction by virtue of insidious indulgence, one finds an obstacle to salvation. Knowing God can require not just a heart but a brain.

The moral wall surrounding the country has receded into obscurity. For many, gone are the daily journeys of faith, the nobility of ordered liberty, the will to call the fiasco by its true name. Here now are the days of dialogue, of riddles that glisten but lead nowhere, of predators disguised as prey. Misunderstanding can take form as the butchering of a vote.

Silence can lack the consolation it champions. Marijuana’s militancy is worthy of more than pondering. The drug is as much a symptom as the disease itself, as much a revelation of a place as of the times. The hour is ripe for justice and good sense to rise in the West.