{"id":4731,"date":"2022-03-09T19:20:45","date_gmt":"2022-03-09T19:20:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cannabisnow.com\/?p=59084"},"modified":"2022-03-09T19:20:45","modified_gmt":"2022-03-09T19:20:45","slug":"catholic-church-against-cannabis-legalization-in-minnesota","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/?p=4731","title":{"rendered":"Catholic Church Against Cannabis Legalization in Minnesota"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Bible is life\u2019s skeleton key: a document that, in the right (or wrong) hands, can be useful for justifying (or condemning) just about anything. That latest interpretation of divine will is why the Catholic Church opposes marijuana legalization in Minnesota. <\/p>\n

Last year, with support from Gov. Tim Walz, a legalization bill<\/a> passed the Democratic Party-controlled state House. Getting through the Republican majority state Senate will require support from reluctant Republicans\u2014and will have to survive opposition from a coalition called Minnesotans Against Marijuana Legalization, which consists of the state police officers\u2019 union, truckers and the Minnesota Catholic Conference (MCC),<\/a> the Church\u2019s policy shop.<\/p>\n

Special Coalition Echoes Republican Cannabis Fears<\/strong><\/h4>\n

The MCC\u2019s stance against cannabis legalization follows other Catholic organizations in other states standing against legalization. In 2018, Michigan\u2019s Catholic Church urged voters<\/a> to reject that state\u2019s Proposal 1. (Voters didn\u2019t listen.) In Canada, where the national government legalized cannabis in 2018, the Church at least signaled<\/a> tepid support for medical cannabis \u201cwhen properly dispensed for therapeutic purposes,\u201d but spoke out against using cannabis for \u201cdeliberate intoxication.\u201d (The Church has yet to receive the \u201ccannabis as wellness product\u201d memo.)<\/p>\n

The Church has a losing record, but fortune may be kinder in Minnesota, where the Catholic Church appears to be taking the lead against cannabis legalization. At a January press conference announcing the launch of Minnesotans Against Marijuana Legalization, it was the Catholic Conference\u2019s Ryan Hamilton who condemned the legalization bill as not \u201ca justice bill, [but] a marijuana commercialization bill,\u201d according to the Associated Press<\/a>. <\/p>\n

As for why legalization is bad, opponents brought up all the usual bugaboos\u2014more people driving stoned, more people failing drug tests and thus unable to work\u2014but, in a departure from the usual anti-legalization script, with the additional flavor of the holy word. \u201cOur direction on this issue comes from the pope himself,\u201d Hamilton said<\/a> in an interview published with The Catholic Spirit. <\/p>\n

Does God Really Condemn Weed?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Why does God think weed is bad? In lieu of a statement, Katherine Szepieniec, a spokesperson for the Minnesota Catholic Conference, directed Cannabis Now to a 2014 TIME magazine article<\/a>, in which Pope Francis condemned legalization of any drug\u2014a position the Church has consistently held since 2001. <\/p>\n

\u201cAttempts, however limited, to legalize so-called \u2018recreational drugs,\u2019 aren\u2019t only highly questionable from a legislative standpoint, but they fail to produce the desired effects,\u201d the Pope said then. Let me state this in the clearest terms possible: The problem of drug use isn\u2019t solved with drugs! Drug addiction is an evil, and with evil there can be no yielding or compromise.\u201d <\/p>\n

According to TIME, Pope Francis\u2019s main problem with drugs is that they create dependencies that \u201cboth hurt relationships and trap people in poverty.\u201d That may be true in certain cases\u2014cannabis addiction is a real thing and a real problem for the people who experience it\u2014but it\u2019s also true that cannabis prohibition<\/em> creates problems, including impoverishment and incarceration, and for no other reason than a man-made law. <\/p>\n

What does God\u2014or the Pope, or the Minnesota Catholic Conference\u2014think about people using weed to throw other people in jail or reduce their economic vitality? The wrongs of the War on Drugs, racially biased drug arrests and impoverishment of communities wasn\u2019t something either Pope Francis, the Canadian bishops or the Michigan Catholic Conference addressed. And to those questions, Szepieniec didn\u2019t respond.<\/p>\n

The Church has come out against drug use before\u2014only to change its mind when convenient. According to Sanho Tree, the director of the Drug Policy Project at the think-tank Institute for Policy Studies, the Catholic Church banned the practice of coca-leaf chewing in what is now modern-day Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and other countries high in the Andes Mountains\u2014or at least it did until silver mines were discovered<\/a> at elevations of 13,000 feet and above. The Spanish settlers (and the Church) soon found out that indigenous coerced labor couldn\u2019t function at such high altitudes without chewing coca leaves\u2014and all of a sudden, coca use was OK again.<\/p>\n

Will the Church adopt a softer stance on cannabis legalization, or perhaps endorse decriminalization as an alternative to the status quo that\u2019s undeniably caused so many earthly problems? Unlikely. In his interview with the Catholic Spirit, MCC\u2019s Hamilton said<\/a> that the Minnesota Church will continue \u201cstanding up against an industry that has proven to do more harm than good to the poor and vulnerable and the common good.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Bible is life\u2019s skeleton key: a document that, in the right (or wrong) hands, can be useful for justifying (or condemning) just about anything. That latest interpretation of divine will is why the Catholic Church opposes marijuana legalization in Minnesota. Last year, with support from Gov. Tim Walz, a legalization bill passed the Democratic Party-controlled state House. Getting through the Republican majority state Senate will require support from reluctant Republicans\u2014and will have to survive opposition from a coalition called Minnesotans Against Marijuana Legalization, which consists of the state police officers\u2019 union, truckers and the Minnesota Catholic Conference (MCC), the Church\u2019s policy shop. Special… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marijuana_information"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4731\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}