I spent some time over at Focus on the Family, [1] a site that teaches God’s own version of morality, to see what they had to say about drug use. As it turned out, the advice depended on whether the drug was illegal, as though God defers to the U.S. Congress to figure out what drugs are immoral.
Over and over, the Focus on the Family attitude is that you need to avoid “illicit” or “illegal” drugs. On the other hand, barely a word is said about prescription drugs you can buy legally. I checked out several other conservative Christian websites and I found the same attitude. Legal = moral, whereas illegal = immoral. There is no hint that mind-altering = immoral.
This hypocritical attitude is described by Tim Wu in an article called “American Lawbreaking”: [2]
Over the last two decades, the pharmaceutical industry has developed a full set of substitutes for just about every illegal narcotic we have.
See also, a related article from this site. [3] It’s further interesting to note that most religions don’t prohibit alcohol or cigarette use. God smiles at drugs that are taxed, apparently.
I can only assume, then, that God looks favorably on drugs that make corporations wealthy. On the other hand, if you are a poor person living in the inner city, God won’t like it one bit if you self-medicate with home grown marijuana. By the way, 829,627 people were arrested for possessing marijuana in 2006. [1]
If artificial mind-altering is good (at least in moderation), it would seem that God wouldn’t care if you get the job done through a health-care bureacracy or whether you self-medicated with a safe street drug like marijuana. If artificial mood-altering can sometimes be a good thing, why deprive the poor. After all, Christians are under the directive to be kind to the poor.
If you are poor, you are much more likely to be subjected to stress and violence. You are much more likely to face seemingly insurmountable financial pressures. [4] You are much more likely to be a witness (or a victim) of acts of violence than those well-to-do folks in the suburbs. But those suburban folks have those healthy plans that provide psychologists to help them when they are stressed. And those suburban folks can afford the factory-made mood-altering drugs. God doesn’t seem to mind that suburban folks are artificially altering their moods. They have no duty to “repent” after partaking of Prozac, Ritalin, Vicodin, OxyContin, Wellbutrin or Clonazepam. After all, they need these drugs and it is likely that some of the folks who attend those big suburban churches are highly paid employees of the pharmaceutical industry.
Even though you (a poor inner city person) need stress relief much more than those people in the suburbs and even though you can’t afford the fancy drugs sold at drugstores, you’d better not grow a little patch of marijuana in the back yard or you’ll be thrown in the slammer. [1] And, apparently, even if you do your time in prison, God will eventually throw you into hell.
[This piece is not intended to advocate taking any drugs, prescription or illegal. My working assumption is that being healthy minimizes the use of any sort of drug. My main point here is the rampant hypocrisy embedded in many forms of religious judgment (and the hypocrisy of the criminal “justice” system)].
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