From: [d--i--y] at [carson.u.washington.edu] (The Freedom Courier)
Newsgroups: alt.law-enforcement,talk.politics.drugs,alt.drugs,alt.soc
Subject: Roman Catholic Church vs. Drug Legalization
Date: 17 Dec 1993 16:45:10 GMT

I saw this and just had to share it.  
This article first appeared in the British libertarian 
journal "Free Life" Issue Number 15.

Permission is granted for redistribution and publication so
long as the author's name and original source are identified.                
                     
                     DOPE AND THE POPE:
                      A BRIEF DIALOGUE

                      by Howard Perkins

Passing down Fleet Street to work the other morning, I was 
stopped on the corner of Whitefriars by an evangelist.  Such 
people I normally try to avoid.  But this day I was early, 
and the sun was shining.  For once I decided to stop and 
listen to what he had to say.

"Sir" said he smiling, "of all the religions that have ever 
existed anywhere in the world, there has been none so frankly 
blasphemous and abominable as the Church of Rome.  Its High 
Priest claims not merely a sovereignty over mankind extending 
to the binding and loosing of political allegiances, but also 
an absolute infallibility in certain matters of morals and 
doctrine.  Common sense alone might declare these claims the 
sure signs of a false religion.  But we have in addition the 
express Word of God.  For with what else but the Church of 
Rome does the latter part of John's Revelation deal?

"I will not call membership of that Church a passport 
straight to Hell.  Many of its humbler devotees cannot see 
where the Truth lies; and perhaps these will receive some 
part of the Divine Indulgence.  But what of the better 
classes of Papist?  What particularly of those living in a 
Protestant country such as our own, everywhere faced with 
evidences of that Truth - yet willfully remaining ignorant of 
it?  These I believe are at serious risk of receiving 
Damnation.

"Now it may be, following Tertullian, that one of the keener 
joys of being in Heaven is to watch from on high the torments 
of the Damned.  For ourselves, though, we must surely feel
distress at the prospect of so much suffering that might so 
easily be avoided.  We must also bear in mind that to look 
idly on while sin is committed may be partly to share in its 
guilt.  I say, then, that both altruism and self-interest 
compel us to make war on the Errors of Rome.

"What use, though, telling every Papist of the risk he runs?  
That risk is clearly evident, yet even the wisest Papists 
deny it.  I cannot imagine that any sane person could want 
Damnation.  Therefore, I must conclude that every papist who 
is not impenetrably stupid is mentally ill; and the mentally 
ill, everyone agrees, merit a little brotherly coercion in 
their own interest.  Popery must be discouraged by law, 
Papists until they recant being made second class citizens - 
barred from the professions and any office of trust.  
Naturally, their children should not be made to suffer by 
their parents' obduracy, but should be removed into public 
care and brought up as good Protestants.

"At the same time, we must cut off the infection at its 
roots.  We must close down all the Roman churches and expel 
or lock away the priests.  All trinkets and books which seem 
to promote or sustain Popery should be seized - a due 
allowance being made for purposes of research.  It should be 
made a very serious offence for anyone to be converted or to 
convert another.

"All this will, of course, require continuing action.  The 
Police will need additional powers to maintain close watch 
and prevent any lingering of the Church in secret, financed 
perhaps by our enemies abroad.  There will need to be a 
relaxation of those rules of procedure and evidence which 
derive from an age less threatened than our own by Popery.  
We are at war with a disease, let it be recalled - at war 
over the future well-being of countless millions of our 
fellows.  If the means appear in any way to be harsh, they 
are justified a thousand times over by the glory of the end 
to which they direct."

"Sir" said I, appalled, "yours is a monstrous doctrine - one 
to which our law, thank God, has been effectively deaf for 
centuries.  Whether or not the Roman Catholic faith be an 
abomination I do not care to enquire.  But even granted you 
are correct, no right of persecution follows from it.  The 
rule of a free society is that people are to be left to live 
as they please, each responsible to himself.  If he should 
lay hands on the life or property of another, by all means, 
let him be taken up and punished.  But if what he does harms 
only himself, that is his concern.  As Mill has said,

     There [may be] good reasons for remonstrating with 
     him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or 
     entreating him, but not for compelling him, or 
     visiting him with any evil in case he do 
     otherwise....  Over himself, over his own mind and 
     body, the individual is sovereign.

"I grant the matter is different for children.  Given a 
strong danger of their coming to harm, there is a case for 
removing them into another custody.  But this is a power to 
be used sparingly, always asking - 'is this interference for 
the safety of a child or a concealed persecution of the 
parents?'  Catholics as a group do not violently assault 
their children.  Nor can I believe that God would punish 
children brought early before Him for their parents' 
doctrinal mistake.  And so long as there is no bar on the 
right of young adults to make free enquiry for the truth, I 
see no reason for concern.

"You go to Heaven in your way" I ended, "and let others go in 
theirs.  More will get there so, I believe, than chained in 
single file behind you."

Quite unperturbed, still smiling, my evangelist replied:  
"Certainly, Mill and the other liberals would be formidable 
opponents had I any real need to meet them.  Luckily, 
perhaps, there is none.  Their arguments are still brought 
out in some matters, but have mostly long since not been 
merely abandoned but repudiated.  You say that my doctrine is 
no part of English law.  Have you never heard of the Misuse 
of Drugs Act 1971?"

I nodded.  "A wise and necessary law" I added.

My evangelist continued:  "Together with supplementary 
legislation, its end is to reduce the consumption of many 
drugs to the smallest degree compatible with their continued 
medical use, and to ban others entirely.  The maximum 
sentence for dealing in controlled drugs is imprisonment for 
life.  Then there is the Drug Trafficking Offences Act 1986, 
the express purpose of which is to reverse the normal burden 
of proof in certain criminal cases, so making the 
confiscation of a trafficker's assets easier.  There was a 
small outcry at the passage of this Act from the consistent 
liberals.  But who listened to them while so much else was 
being said about the 'War on Drugs'?

"And why this 'War'?  Is it that drugs inflame those who use 
them to the point where harm to others inevitably or 
frequently follows?  No.  The effect of cannabis - by far the 
most commonly used illegal drug - and of heroin - the most 
currently reviled - is to relax the nervous system.  The 
incidence of violent crime committed under their influence is 
so small that no separate figures are published.  There are 
other drugs which do excite - cocaine, for example, and 
amphetamine - and taking which does sometimes lead to violent 
behaviour.  But the incidence is still too small to deserve 
separate notice.  Who has never met an aggressive drunk, or 
heard of the Drunken Driver?

"There are crimes related to the use of drugs.  Between 1979 
and 1984, convictions for possession or supply rose from 
14,054 to 22,882, and have since risen far higher.  But these 
are entirely a product of control, without which they would 
register only as higher sales of pharmaceutical goods.

"The same is true for organised crime, which is said in 1989 
to have drawn #4.8 billion from the supply of illegal drugs.  
It presently flourishes by encouragement on a scale that 
could hardly be improved by deliberate public subsidy.  But 
how long might these profits last in open market, with Boots 
competing for the retail trade?

Of petty crime among addicts, some results from high prices, 
some from the fact that those made to do business with 
criminals seldom preserve many scruples of their own.

"Whatever else may occasionally be said, drugs are controlled 
for one reason, and one alone - because they are believed to 
harm the user.  This has been the reason behind every scheme 
of restriction since the Great War - why a Commons Committee 
in 1985 opposed the legalising of cannabis; why efforts are 
now made to prevent homosexuals from buying amyl nitrate; why 
every March the British Medical Association and other health 
activist groups demand higher taxes on drink and tobacco.

Protection from his own folly is held to justify every 
interference in the drug user's life.  Who stops to think 
that he might take drugs from choice? that, mindful of the 
risks involved, he might still think a shortened life fair 
exchange for the pleasure given him by his drug?  Who ever 
compares drug use with all those other activities undertaken 
for pleasure, but which shorten or endanger life?  
Mountaineers and gluttons are left largely in peace.  Drug 
users alone are thought mad for not preferring a longer life; 
and when ordinary compulsion fails, are regularly shut away 
in prisons or mental hospitals.  Of course, their children 
can be taken away.  Where drug users are concerned, your J.S. 
Mill and all the other liberals might never have learned to 
write.

"All this; yet it has been argued with some show of success 
that drugs are nowhere near the great scourge that people 
imagine them.  There is scarcely a shred of evidence that 
cannabis is more harmful in the long run than equal amounts 
of tobacco.  Indeed, since no one could smoke as much 
cannabis as tobacco without falling asleep, it may carry less 
chance of lung cancer.  Cocaine, says Martindale's 
Pharmacopoeia, causes 'no physical dependence'; and unlike 
with alcohol, lethal overdoseage is almost unknown.  Heroin, 
discovered in 1874 and sold for years over the counter as a 
patent cough medicine, remains for many a safe and 
indispensible painkiller.  These three drugs being freely 
available, who would turn to such substances of less 
predictable effect as glue and lighter fuel?  It is said that 
the worst personal harm of taking drugs is, again, a product 
of control - of adulterated black market drugs and infected 
second-hand needles.

"But I take no position on drug control.  I say only this:  
that the public tolerates and encourages a set of policies 
which are to suppress no more crime than they have themselves 
created, are not justified on the grounds of preventing harm 
to third parties, and which many claim may not even be for 
the good of drug users as others define that good.  Why then 
treat me as some absurd relic of the past?  By all means, 
declare yourself a Papist and me wrong, and let us argue from 
there.  But spare me your part-time liberalism.  Every type 
of argument supporting drug control supports me equally on 
the suppression of Popery.  I say further - the drug 
controllers want merely to save bodies:  I save souls.  My 
case is infinitely stronger at least in this respect.  How, 
without gross inconsistency, can you allow one and not the 
other?

"Come then, Sir, let me write your name in my Book of Life.  
It has room only for 144,000, you know and -"

But I was late for work now and had to leave.  When I looked 
back, he was still smiling, still apparently reasonable, as 
he began preaching to a small crowd that was gathering on the 
text "Compel them to come in".  He was, even so, quite mad.  
There is all the difference in the world between stopping the 
vile trade in drugs which so threatens our society and his 
wicked scheme of persecution.

At least, it would be awful if people ever stopped thinking 
so.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Howard Perkins is a civil servant working in the Lord
Chancellor's Depertment in London.

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