_WORLD WATCH______________________________
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Brazil ________________
Rejects legalization campaign
A move to allow “soft” drugs
The retired Archbishop of Rio de Janeiro, Cardinal Eugênio de Araújo Sales, rejected the idea of legalizing drugs as a way to fight drug trafficking.
The idea of legalizing the so-called “soft drugs” like marijuana has been proposed by some influential thinkers as a response to last year’s Lent Campaign of the Brazilian Bishops’ Conference, which focused on drug addiction.
One well-known sociologist, Guillerme Texeira, has suggested that drug addiction and trafficking should be addressed like alcoholism. The controlled and moderate use of recreational drugs should not be a concern of the government, he has argued.
Cardinal Sales responded to that suggestion in an op-ed column published by the daily Jornal do Brasil. He argued that the government cannot stand by while “merchants of death operate to poison a country’s youth.”
The cardinal argued that “it is completely fallacious to equate alcohol consumption with drug addiction.” The temperate use of alcohol is not a moral problem, he pointed out, whereas “in the case of the consumption of drugs, it is always morally illicit, since it implies always the willing renunciation to think, desire, and act as a free human being.”
“All of us, but especially political authorities, will be accountable before God about how we tried to fight against evil,” the cardinal reminded his readers. “That is one more reason to be extremely careful in the kind of legal decisions we make regarding preventing drug abuse.”