Christians Against The Drug War

I came across a couple of sites about Christians Against Drug Prohibition while noodling around the net. One of them was was this book:The War on Drugs Is a War on Freedom

One reviewer had this to say (bolding mine):

For Vance, the fundamental issue in drug regulation is individual rights. He does not at all deny that these drugs can cause great harm; but the issue of regulation is not to be settled by balancing the benefits and harms of open access to drugs against the benefits and harms of their regulation or prohibition. Vance, it is apparent, has launched a remarkable war of his own, conducted with superb generalship, against the drug war; and one of the arguments in his campaign strikes me as an especially effective one. The harms of tobacco and alcohol vastly exceed the ill effects of dangerous drugs, yet there is no call to ban them. Prohibition is recognized by nearly everyone as a failure, not to be repeated. If this is so, how can one justify banning less dangerous substances? Vance writes from a viewpoint that will surprise many readers. He himself does not condone the use of dangerous drugs. To the contrary, he is a Christian and a Bible scholar of considerable note and he regards their use as sinful. ‘As an adherent to the ethical principles of the New Testament, I regard drug abuse to be a vice, a sin, and an evil that Christians should avoid even as they avoid supporting the government’s war on drugs’ (p. 79). If Vance takes this view of drug use, why is he so adamant that people have the right to consume these drugs? His answer will be of interest to all students of moral theology. He holds that Christians can with perfect consistency uphold the distinction between vices and crimes, with only the latter an appropriate area for forcible suppression.

Here is another one: Why Drug Decriminalization is Central to Liberty.

Drugs Are the Gateway Thug to Statism

“The drug war has been used to destroy our freedom.” [1] This isn’t a quote from the ALCU or Dr. Ron Paul, but from a 1994 interview with conservative Presbyterian theologian R.J. Rushdoony. He understood that the drug war had been used for the federal encroachment of individual liberties. He recognized that “the drug war has been so deadly to the freedom of the people…” and the federal government has justified each encroachment with the evil of “drugs” as the fear-mongering excuse. Rushdoony continues, “In the name of seizing drugs a man’s car, boat, plane, house or whatever can be confiscated, even if not a trace of drugs are found.”

Here is another one: Should Christians Support the War on Drugs?

Although I am a theological and cultural conservative, and neither advocate nor condone the use of mind-altering, behavior-altering, or mood-altering substances, I believe that Christians shouldn’t support the government’s war on drugs any more than they should support the government’s wars on poverty, obesity, dietary fat, cholesterol, cancer, and tobacco.

Not only do I not use what are classified by the government as illegal drugs, wouldn’t use them if they were legal, and would prefer that no one else do so whether they are legal or illegal, I would rather see people use drugs than the government wage war on them for doing so.

As a believer in moral absolutes, I consider the use of any drug for any reason other than because of a medical necessity to be dangerous, destructive, and immoral, but I also consider the government’s war on drugs to be dangerous, destructive, and immoral.

As an adherent to the ethical principles of the New Testament, I regard drug abuse to be a vice, a sin, and an evil that Christians should avoid even as they avoid supporting the government’s war on drugs.

As a Christian, I oppose root and branch every facet of the government’s war on drugs just as much as I oppose the use of drugs themselves.

Yes, I know I am being redundant. But that’s because some Christians still just don’t get it. So let me make myself perfectly clear: drugs are bad. Smoking crack is evil. Getting high on marijuana cigarettes or brownies is a vice. Snorting cocaine is destructive. Shooting up with heroin is sinful. Swallowing ecstasy is immoral. Injecting yourself with crystal meth is dangerous. But none of these things means that there should be a law against doing any of them. And it is a myth that those who favor marijuana legalization or drug decriminalization just want to get high without being hassled by the police. Pat Robertson certainly doesn’t. And I certainly don’t either.

There are many reasons why Christians should not support the war on drugs.

Constitutionally, the federal government has no authority whatsoever to regulate drugs, let alone criminalize their manufacture, sale, and use. Just like the government has no authority to control what Americans choose to eat, drink, smoke, inject, absorb, snort, sniff, inhale, swallow, or otherwise ingest into their bodies.

Speaking of Medical Necessity maybe a look at Endocannabinoids The Science would be helpful. Followed by a contemplation of this:

Medical Marijuana prohibition is a crime against humanity and a violation of the religious precept – heal the sick.

Pass it on. Especially to your Christian friends.

And then something I’m finding truer every day: The Right & the Drug War – Conservatives are the last prohibitionists, but that’s changing.

But the tide may be turning. At a Republican primary debate in South Carolina last May, Ron Paul likened the freedom to use drugs to the freedom to worship according to one’s faith, a radical insight about the liberty of conscience usually heard mainly from proud proponents of psycho-pharmacological experimentation. Moderator Chris Wallace asked the Texas congressman whether using heroin was simply an “an exercise of liberty.” Paul responded with a rhetorical question: “How many people here would use heroin if it were legal?” He mocked the very idea of paternalistic prohibition: “Oh yeah, I need the government to take care of me. I don’t want to use heroin, so I need these laws.”

The audience erupted in laughter and enthusiastic applause. Many of Paul’s supporters sat in the crowd, but more important was the lack of booing from the more conventionally conservative attendees. In this Republican audience in a right-leaning state, some of the most radical arguments for heroin legalization fared surprisingly well. Even if today’s conservatives do not buy into all the reasons to end prohibition, they no longer find them as dangerous or worthy of ridicule as in years past.

Also in May, a survey conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research found that 67 percent of Republicans wanted to see an end to federal medical-marijuana raids. President Obama’s policies are not only out of touch with his liberal base, they are far more draconian than what most conservatives want.

Well I am of course pleased with movement. But may I say, “Faster Please” ?


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8 responses to “Christians Against The Drug War”

  1. Kathy Kinsley Avatar
    Kathy Kinsley

    “But may I say, “Faster Please” ?”

    Sure, but I think that William F. Buckley is probably rolling in his grave at being unmentioned as a conservative while Rushdoony (who was a Christian Reconstructionist – let’s just say that they are to Christianity what al Qaeda is to Islam) is praised – conservative isn’t exactly a good description.)

    The noted, respected, (and unfortunately, late) William F. Buckley came out against the drug war some years ago.

  2. Kathy Kinsley Avatar
    Kathy Kinsley

    NO. NO. A THOUSAND TIMES NO. Pro-slavery. No thanks. And don’t even ask about his son-in-law Gary North. Just don’t.

    It’s the ones like them that make me want to be a dyed-in-the-ecologically-correct-wool liberal.

  3. Kathy Kinsley Avatar
    Kathy Kinsley

    Sorry. I spent two years arguing with Rushdoonio’s son in law and heir. Right around 2000 – yanno, the time when everything was going to go BOOM? And didn’t. But he/they put out their plans for after the apocalypse. Let’s just say that those plans weren’t exactly good for the rest of us.

  4. Simon Avatar

    Kathy – I quite agree about Rushdoony’s politics. I argued with Gary North – mano a mano – about it for quite some time. Then I dropped his newsletter. Couldn’t stomach it. BTW I got on the North newsletter through Lew Rockwell. Another slaver. I generally avoid him these days.

    But allies are where you find them. And even the US was at one time allied with the USSR.

    My intention is to help the right go libertarian and then go after the left. I’m hoping I can keep doing this until I’m 80.

  5. Simon Avatar

    And funny enough there is Tom Fleming

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/sen-john-cornyn-meets-the_b_29835.html

    who I have met personally and who took an instant dislike to me. Heh. From the link:

    Even though the Rockford Institute has been dubbed “xenophobic, racist, and nativist,” by its former New York branch director, Richard John Neuhaus; even though Rockford’s current director, Thomas Fleming, is a leading anti-Semite and Holocaust revisionist; even though Rockford’s flagship publication, Chronicles, has served as a nest for white nationalists like Sam Francis; Cornyn — a moving force behind Republican immigration policy — accepted Rockford’s invitation to headline their conference.

    Perhaps Cornyn thought nobody would notice his appearance with a marginal organization like Rockford. Though it was once considered influential within the conservative movement, Rockford has been in steep decline since 1989, when Neuhaus wrote an internal memo warning that some institute publications contained attacks on “rootless, deracinated and cosmopolitan elites” that reflected “the classic language of anti-Semitism.” In response, Fleming sacked Neuhaus, throwing him and his staff (and their belongings) out in the street and changing the locks on his Manhattan office. The incident was reported in the New York Times and is described in detail in neocon pundit David Frum’s provocative essay about paleoconservatism, “Unpatriotic Conservatives.” Since then, Chronicles has suffered under the direction of the draconian Fleming, whose racist diatribes have helped reduce the magazine’s subscription base to a piddling 5000.

    =====

    There is a lot of poison on the right. BTW I met him at a dinner for writers of the local free weekly “The Rock River Times”. I was doing a weekly column on drugs at the time.

    Some day I may write up how that all came about.

  6. Simon Avatar

    BTW Rockwell is a Neo-Confederate. As is Fleming.

  7. Eric Scheie Avatar

    While I have avoided posting about it (I am not in the mood for more flak lately), I was quite annoyed by Cornyn’s attempt to amend Feinstein’s latest AWB by exempting veterans. Feinstein’s comment (that veterans have PTSD and should not be allowed “assault weapons”) stole the show, and in the process no one asked exactly why Cornyn would be trying to make the AWB easier for the Republicans to vote for. I don’t trust him.

  8. Kathy Kinsley Avatar
    Kathy Kinsley

    “I argued with Gary North – mano a mano – about it for quite some time. Then I dropped his newsletter. Couldn’t stomach it. ”

    I did the same – on forums. Only it was femme a mano, which basically got me ignored – by him, though I think/hope some of his followers had second thoughts.

    Either way, no thanks.