(The following is an ATW dealing with the issue of legalization of marijuana. I didn’t take any specific position on the topic but rather presented the steps for moral decision making. Though I did point out at the end that both Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis have been opposed to the legalization of marijuana as their prudential judgment on the matter. I tried to stress that any substance abuse is morally wrong, with a focus on the damage that alcohol does to people’s lives, as alcohol seems particularly problematic in the CNMI.)
My high school and undergraduate college years were the 60’s. It was a decade of major social change, adventure, new ideas, hope and idealism. Part of this was the quest for new experience, which was epitomized in the hippie lifestyle that emerged during that decade. Eastern mysticism, yoga, Zen, farming communes, world travel on the cheap, as well as experimentation with substances that altered your perception of reality were all the rage during that decade and into the 70’s. LSD and heroin were the dangerous drugs of the era, with marijuana being perceived as less dangerous but still a gateway drug to the more dangerous substances. Many people argued that marijuana was less dangerous than alcohol, since alcohol has been directly involved in more deaths than any other substance. That claim was true back then and is still true today.
The problem is that prohibition was tried once and didn’t work, so no government was going to try to prohibit the sell or use of alcohol. It was too entrenched in the American way of life. However, marijuana wasn’t alcohol. It didn’t have the history associated with prohibition and its recension. So, most jurisdictions passed laws prohibiting the sale and use of marijuana. Many people argued that prohibition didn’t work with alcohol, so why should it work with marijuana. However, the weight of public opinion was with marijuana prohibition, so it made it into the law books. If you were a tough, law and order type politician you supported strict anti-drug laws as a sign of your macho credentials, and marijuana prohibition stayed on the books. In the minds of many people, it was only the “hippie-dippy” types who wanted to repeal the marijuana prohibition laws.
In the past decade or so there has been a silent shift in thinking among many people. Libertarians have come out in favor of repealing marijuana prohibition laws, to get the government out of the lives of the average person. If it is no threat to the common good, then the government should stay out of the issue, according to Libertarian thinkers. The argument has also been put forward that marijuana has significant medicinal uses and is a far less dangerous substance than some of the opioids that are prescribed for the same purposes. Also, Colorado has shown that the growing and selling of marijuana can be a significant source of revenue and tax dollars for the state.
One result of this shift in thinking is that the legalization of marijuana has been considered in many political jurisdictions, the CNMI among them. Is this a good move? That question can be answered from a variety of economic, political and utilitarian perspectives. Since this is Along the Way, the question we need to ask is, “What is the morality of the legalization of marijuana?”
Let me warn you from the beginning that I have no intention of offering a definitive or official answer to that question. There is none. Further, my goal isn’t to give you mindless answers that can simply be obeyed. My goal is to give you the tools you can use to sort through the issues involved and reach a decision in the depths of your conscience.
In trying to determine the morality of a specific action or policy several factors must be considered. First, what it the nature of the act? Is it morally good? Morally neutral? Morally evil? Second, what are the intentions of the actor(s)? Third, what are the likely consequences of the action?
When we speak of the nature of an action, we are dealing with the act itself and not considering any aggravating or mitigating factors that impact the culpability of the actor. So, for example, it is always morally wrong to kill an innocent person. Prayer and the corporal works of mercy (feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned, etc.) are always morally good actions in themselves. However, most human actions are neither morally good nor morally evil, they fall into the category of simple human behavior that is morally neutral. Morally neutral behavior might be eating a hamburger, going for a walk, changing your clothes or reading a book. When we are dealing with morally neutral behavior we must continue to other criteria to get a better sense of their moral character. Legalizing the production, sale and use of marijuana deals with removing prohibitions on behavior that seems to be morally neutral.