Dogma is an ancient Greek word that originally meant opinion until it was repurposed in 1534 to be an authoritarian mandate with legal consequences for anyone questioning it. It was the same year the Church of England split from the Roman Catholic Church. In the Reformation, criticizing dogma became heresy. Rejecting it altogether could lead to lethal penalties.
Fear mongering and foreboding over dogmas involving marijuana use began for Western culture in 1484 when Pope Innocent VIII issued a papal mandate rejecting cannabis consumption. The Catholic Church reigned over the medical profession at the time. Besides rejecting cannabis as a medicine, the pope also believed that by drinking children’s blood he could alleviate or prevent some of his health problems. Among his other faults Innocent VIII is remembered for initiating the Catholic witch hunts and for bankrupting the papacy through nepotism, simony and extravagant spending. He used Church funds to support his illegitimate children with titles and estates.
Good Catholics were subsequently expected to believe cannabis was a witch’s tool used to hereticate the soul. Alleged witches in the late Middle Ages could be male or female. In most cases they were female medical practitioners at odds with the male Catholic clergy who ruled the Western healing traditions. The clergy were not allowed to take money for their medical services for fear it could lead to corruption in the Church. More medical practitioners were needed so in due course the job of medical doctor emerged to become a profitable secular career in which the clergy might participate. Nuns could still work as nurses for example.
Apart from opium and alcohol, medicines in the medieval Christian era were viewed with moral suspicion. The clergy believed a demonic force was the enabling agent if a drug got people high. The ability to alter consciousness resulted in the humble marijuana plant being elevated to the lofty position of the supernatural to become one among many demons thought to exist everywhere. By contrast, wine is sacred for the Catholic Church. Wine is central to the Eucharist, where bread and wine undergo a ceremonial metamorphosis to become the body and blood of Christ that is symbolically cannibalized by parishioners. The first communion age is about 7 years-old, or when a child is considered mature enough to sip wine.
Wine has always played a substantial role in Christian history. According to scripture Noah had a vineyard. Benedictines and Cistercians are regarded as the early pioneers of excellent winemaking. A Benedictine monk, Dom Pierre Pérignon, invented champagne. St. Junípero Serra brought viticulture to California by planting grapes at Catholic missions. His miraculous efforts grew to become the state’s $84.5 billion per year wine industry. Other religious groups in which wine is fundamental to their ancient religious ceremonies include Judaism and Shinto.
Fear of cannabis and psychedelic drugs by modern cults, sects, and mainstream religions originates with a belief that psychoactive drugs can stimulate the mind and imagination in ways that might weaken dogmatic authority. If the critical-thinking accusation is correct, it would follow that marijuana and psilocybin could be employed as medical treatments for religious hysteria and extremism. Unfortunately, neither marijuana nor psilocybin show signs of reducing dogmatic hostilities, while there exists evidence that psilocybin can enhance or stimulate religious experiences. More research is needed. Either way, the wine industry is safe.
The evidence connecting religious dogma to marijuana prohibition is best illustrated by those who favor cannabis and those who don’t. Recent polls suggest that religious people are more likely to practice moral absolutism regarding marijuana use, whereas marijuana users are more likely to accept moral relativism. In a 2021 Pew poll only 44-percent of white Protestants and 58-percent of white Catholics favored full marijuana legalization compared to 88-percent of atheists who favored all uses of cannabis. The large opinion gaps indicate that religion, emotion and social norms play a more important role in cannabis prohibition than suspected health concerns. Marijuana prohibition is what many always suspected it to be, a religious dogma backed by falsehoods.
As a legal instrument, marijuana prohibition is required to fall under a specific set of rules that sidestep religious decision making. The U.S. Constitution’s establishment clause insists that Congress not create a national church or endorse purely religious practices. Despite this restriction the government and courts often side with religions, sects and cults regarding their uniquely unscientific rejection of illicit drugs. Other legal safeguards add weight to the establishment clause. Article VI of the Constitution states that no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust. Because marijuana criminalization is for all intents and purposes a religiously biased prohibition, a religious test occurs by default when a government agency rejects employment applications because an applicant used marijuana in the recent past, either for religious, medical or recreational purposes.
Marijuana prohibition ignores a person’s right to medical privacy. Privacy in America is protected by the First Amendment’s freedom of association and expression, the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, the Fifth Amendment’s protections against self-incrimination, the Ninth Amendment’s recognition of rights not specifically enumerated, and the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause used to protect individual autonomy. Medical record privacy is assured by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).
A big problem for law enforcement is that no victim acting as a plaintiff exists in marijuana arrests. Unusual and often extreme measures are therefore required in apprehending violators. Sometimes the measures are illegal, such as entrapment. For instance, entrapment occurs when a person in ill health is forced to use marijuana medicinally but is trapped into committing a violation of the law by not being allowed to possess it legally.
Other enforcement problems exist. Drugs can be planted on a person during a police encounter. Drug laws can be used to target otherwise law-abiding people for political purposes. Drug accusations can be used for personal leverage, e.g., threatening to expose private information or take away children. Marijuana violations have been used as an excuse to deny government monetary assistance to Americans who suffered property damage in wildfires. One marijuana violation can cause a person to lose their government security clearance or be kicked out of the military. Drug prohibition can be an aid in upholding a totalitarian government that persecutes its opponents and private citizens to remain in power.
It’s often argued that legislating morality is impossible. Marijuana and alcohol prohibition are good examples of why it is impossible. Science research consistently points to the health benefits for cannabinoids such that little remains to justify cannabis prohibition but an archaic moral system. Federal drug enforcement agencies are aware of the problems and contradictions of the drug war. The continuing desire to disrupt or eliminate suspected moral enemies appears to dominate all other concerns.
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