The Pope Needs to Meet More Drug Users

As
prohibitionists
typically do, Pope Francis conflated drug use with drug abuse
when he
denounced marijuana legalization on Friday. “Let me state
this in the clearest terms possible,” he said. “The problem of drug
use is not solved with drugs!” But what, exactly, is “the problem
of drug use”? Francis seems to have in mind a harmful,
life-disrupting pattern of heavy use. “Drug addiction is an evil,
and with evil there can be no yielding or compromise,” he said. “To
think that harm can be reduced by permitting drug addicts to use
narcotics in no way resolves the problem.” Even if we agree that
“drug addiction is an evil,” prohibition clearly magnifies that
evil by consigning users to a black market where prices are
artificially high, quality and potency are unpredictable, dangerous
methods of administration are encouraged, conflicts are resolved
through violence, and consumers are subject to arrest at any
moment. It is debatable whether these costs can be justified by
reference to the potential addicts they deter, especially since the
burdens are imposed on people who do not benefit from them. In any
case, what about drug users who are not addicts? Francis seems to
think they do not exist.

Although Francis referred to “alcohol abuse” as an example of
addiction, he did not condemn drinking per se (a dicey proposition,
given wine’s role as a Catholic sacrament). But he made no such
distinction in connection with the currently prohibited
intoxicants, which most people manage to consume without ruining
their lives. That black-and-white attitude may not be surprising
coming from a man with “years of personal experience ministering to
addicts in the drug-laden slums of the Argentine capital,” as the
Associated Press puts it. Similarly, the work of the cops and
addiction treatment specialists who
welcomed the pope’s remarks regullarly exposes them to people
with drug problems. It is risky to draw general conclusions from
such skewed samples. To put it another way, Francis’ encounters
with down-and-out paco addicts in Buenos Aires tell us nothing
about the merits of letting lawyers and schoolteachers in Colorado
unwind with a little Cheery O.G. after a hard day at work.