No, I wouldnt agree that. For all I know, theres biblical justification, or something specific to the catholic church, or he has advisors who advise him on drug policy, or he thinks alcohol is too much part of society to be able to make it illegal, or he truely doesnt class alcohol as a drug, or he sees it as part of the tradition of the church or many other lines of reasoning. Like I said, I likely wouldnt agree with his reasoning

The bible says you shouldnt eat shellfish. Is this because of the harm it causes?


You seem to think that he is using the same reasoning and logic as you. He obviously isnt.

because, he isnt classing them as the same. We've already covered this. Yes, his reasoning is probably wrong. He doesnt feel that he has to apply the same principles to marijuana and alcohol.

As a side note, it's interesting the level of assumption that MB has put into this conversation. The totality of remarks that contain direct quotes from the Pope in the linked article is the following:

The various accusations about what he would say and the arguments he must have used or can't possibly have used is extremely speculative at best.

thats a good point, he says drug addiction is evil, not drugs are evil

The problem is everyone does this, it is just colloquial. I think it is fair to say you are knitting Pope Francis to death here (spell check corrected nit to knit so I went with it).

This is a semantic argument which is kind of unreasonable to hold Pope Francis to.

He is basically just saying, "drugs are bad".

I think it is just a cultural phenomena that we class drugs and alcohol separately. Whether or not this is correct is up for debate but that fact remains most people view them as separate groups.

And this is how the machines begin to take over the world...

Exactly. I don't begrudge him from using the standard language of "drugs and alcohol". The problem is not the linguistic difference, it is the legal one. He shouldn't be advocating for only one of these to be illegal, that he uses different (and standard) terms doesn't bug me much.

Incidentally as a side note, our use of language has a way of reinforcing these differences. For instance, referring to alcohol as a drug, with all the connotations that this has, might help us take seriously the enormous problem that abuse of this drug causes in our society. Or it might make even more obvious how ridiculous the legal asymmetry is between the two drugs. It is a bit like how I will often use the phrase "marriage equality" over "gay marriage" because the word equality pulls in all those positive connotations.

Then why does he include Marijuana in his speech, a drug that it's not possible to become physically addicted to, and mention 'drug use' so often, if drug addiction is his only issue?

Clearly the pope doesn't consider alcohol to be a drug, check this out from a transcript of his speech:

But he seems to switch between 'drug use' and 'drug addiction' with a carefree abandon that I doubt he would tolerate on religious issues. That's the slippery slope fallacy that is my other main issue with his opinion.

Pope Francis Condemns Legalization of Marijuana (since this is a Catholic website, I'm assuming the transcript is accurate)

In that address? Not at all. The different treatment comes from calling for only one of the two similar drugs to be illegal.

One sec, one is immediately absolved from a double standard if they think there actually is a difference, despite being rather mistaken? Like a sexist who applies different standards to employing men and women isn't actually doing a double standard if they legitimately believe in big differences? They are just wrong but we can't say they have a double standard?

The accusation is that he is giving a huge difference in the legal status he is advocating for based on two drugs with considerable similarities (well...alcohol is much worse than pot imo but that only strengths it). To me, that is a double standard. I don't really care if the pope has some unexplained magical difference between the two that justifies his asymmetric advocacy that makes him think he is not applying a double standard.

It's called "context" and it means reading the things that surround the thing you're quoting.

Contextually, he's talking to and about drug addicts. So when he says

He's contextually speaking to and about drug addicts. He's not urging drug addicts to switch to moderate usage, but to abandon their drug addiction.

Nah... You want to hate the Pope so much that you're basically trying your hardest to read things in a way that makes him wrong.

As a point of process, I don't mind if you don't expect us or anyone to agree. What I care about is being able to see that someone else has a cogent justification for their views. I may not end up agreeing with it - I might, for instance, reject various premises in an argument - but at least I can say they have a valid argument. It is through understanding different arguments that we progress on this forum. I am pointing this out because I have seen you use phrases like this a bit like a shield, sort of immunizing you against needing to fully explain and justify your thoughts. I am interested in seeing the justification, even if we don't anticipate ever agreeing on the conclusion!

As to the comments themselves, firstly note that you haven't provided any hint of justification for why being "drunk" or "high" is morally bad. That remains an assertion.

What you have done is said that you can consume small amounts of alcohol to get only a small effect from the drug, but somehow for pot you can't. Just as a point of fact, I don't think this is true. People do consume small amounts of pot to experience only a small effect from the drug and do so for a variety of different reasons, so this sharp asymmetry between the two you provided is just wrong. But even supposing it was true, you haven't spelled out how this makes the one moral and the other immoral. You have claimed a difference between the two drugs that I rather question but okay, let us accept that there is this difference. How do you get to it being immoral?

If someone who thought two categories of people were different treated them differently, that's not a double standard to me.

For example, in slavery era USA, black men and women were treated like property but white men and women were not. I would not call that the creation of a double standard.

Edit: Even though it should be implicitly understood, by it not being a double standard does not make it any more right. Similarly with the sexism above.

And also from classifying them into two different categories. Drugs, and alcohol. If I said Heroin, and drugs, you'd wonder why I was doing it. What the pope did is no different and I won't excuse it simply because it's commonly done because I reject the reasons for why it's commonly done.

I made the same point. A double standard can exist regardless of whether or not the guilty party is aware of it and that's the thing here, I doubt the pope is aware of it. I doubt most people are aware of it.

Agreed. The fact that the Catholic Church uses a drug in it's ceremonies might cause a slight problem for him here though. I could even argue that they are contributing to perpetuating the 'scourge of drug use'. I wonder how he'd react to that accusation.

Like you, I don't find this argument compelling. What you are doing is comparing a good feature of one (small communities get community spirit!) to the bad features of the other (whatever causes your hypothetical advocate to want to ban pot). For instance, since alcohol is worse in many ways, in an alternate world where the legal status was switched perhaps the small communities all serve special brownies at sports games to gain our community spirit and save us from the enormous number of alcohol related deaths.

But sure, if your point is "it is possible to sit down and concoct an argument even I don't think is persuasive that has mention of the current legal status" then sure, I guess we should always be careful not be categorical in our statements. For the most part, however, and for most arguments commonly given to keep pot banned, what the current legal situation is doesn't factor into what our claimed preferred legal situation is. One might even call it the "legalistic fallacy" where what one thinks ought to be legal is premised on what is currently legal.

he is obviously differentiating them on some criteria. Its not like hes going " oh well, they are the same, but , **** pot smokers". Perhaps double standard is not a very useful idea? Person 1 can clearly believe that 2 things belong in different categories, and so can have different standards applied. Person 2 can believe they are in the same category, and so should have the same standards applied. Doesnt it come down, in the end to a discussion of the reasons why person 1 puts them in different categories, and person 2 puts them in the same category? They will argue and change their minds, or not.


Maybe youre right, and the double standard is in the eye of the beholder, that is, if I think 2 things should have the same standards applied, then I can accuse others of having double standards.

Note that gender and race are explicitly given in the stub on double standard in wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_standard) which contains no mention that a double standard is ONLY judged from the perspective of the person prescribing the standard. Used in this way, how could we ever successfully accuse someone of using a double standard. If they treat the races, genders, etc differently they can always say "I'm not using a double standard, the races actually are different".

Not only is this interpretation of the word unorthodox, if true it rather robs us of a useful expression. I want to be able to have a short hand for claiming the pope is applying two different standards to two similar things. If I can't say double standard (because I can't rule out that he doesn't believe in some unspecified difference between them) what phrase would you prefer me to use instead other than double standard?

This is all fine. I see it more as a criticism of western culture en masse then. Not so much, "Aha the Pope is a hypocrite".

Making alcohol illegal is not really a topic of discussion right now so it would be random to say, "oh yeah and by the way I also think alcohol should be illegal now too".

No, this isn't obvious. Firstly, in the evidence in this thread he hasn't specified any criteria to which they are different in any way. In fact, mostly it seems he lumps them together. However, the response is different in that it is only pot he claims to want to be illegal. The only way it is obvious he is meaningfully differentiating them on some criteria - since he hasn't said anything about this - is if you want to give him all the benefit of the doubt and assume he would never make a double standard. That is, since he is advocating only one to be illegal, we must assume he has some criteria to differentiate them even if he hasn't said what it is. Sorry, that isn't enough for me.


See my response to Aaron, but that's how I've always interpreted it, at least.

I might have used the word 'hypocrisy' once early in the thread but I shouldn't have done and I'm not trying to establish the pope to be guilty of it. He would be if he fired one up but I think that what he's actually doing is a double standard and that's different.

Also, there's no 'ah ha' type gotcha here, there's more of a 'wtf....'

Also, if he wants to criticise western culture, I'm sure he's capable of being more direct, and he has been. You're being extremely generous in your interpretation, one might even think a little biased.

You think the pope wouldn't say something because you think it would be random? The CC can't make alcohol illegal, they use it in their ceremonies when they worship the god that they think wants them to tell everyone that drug use is a 'scourge'. That would be a tricky one.

Sure. FWIW, I don't think the Pope is giving more of a double standard than much of western culture en masse. I do expect more from a pope then from the random guy at a bar who would vote against pot legalization - because he is advocating public policy as the spiritual leader of a billion people - but it is the same basic mistake.

I rather think the opposite. It would be very weird to me to decide to comment on what the legal status of one drug ought to be without any shred of thought about what the legal status of very similar drugs to be. The comparison with alcohol is so immediate and so obvious - as in, it is incredibly hard to give compelling arguments for banning pot that don't immediately apply to alcohol - that to blind ourselves of the comparison seems ridiculous. But that is what we have done, and why a century later we still have this ridiculous asymmetry in laws.

Meh, looks like you are trying your hardest to read things in a way that makes him right.

When he says "No to every type of drug use. It is as simple as that. No to any kind of drug use.", I don't think this is correct to read it as ONLY "contextually speaking to and about drug addicts." The plain reading of this is that "any kind of drug use" is bad, not just drug use from addicts. Besides, the context right before this is the legalization of recreational drugs generally so I think it is quite correct to read this generally as well.

Besides, referring to drug addiction when talking about pot is bad in and of itself. This is a standard tactic, when people try to advocate against legalizing pot they drone on and one about the dangers of drug addiction. But they don't end up advocating that alcohol be banned - despite large risk of addiction - and instead advocate that pot be banned - despite low risk of addiction. One can type out many laudable paragraphs about the dangers of addiction, but it doesn't justify the legal asymmetry.

Do you think catching a buzz form one beer or glass of wine is immoral? Cause i cant drink one, unless my tolerance is high form high usage, without catching a buzz.

What is your basis for saying pot has a low risk of addiction and alcohol having a high risk of addiction?

MB,

okay

This is a misunderstanding. My point was: The criticism of Pope Francis for failing to delineate between drugs and alcohol is misplaced. If we want to make a criticism on this basis it should be applied to culture at large and not placed on Pope Francis alone.

This is a "mistake" that everyone makes. UM makes the point that Pope Francis should be held to a higher standard of awareness which is probably fair.

I think my criticism of Pope Francis is actually harsher than yours. Your point is that there is a double standard here. My view is that the Pope should not be providing commentary on public policy at all.

Agreed, his issue is not just with addiction but with drug use, he's quite clear about that. Since he's so adamant about it, and since the CC clearly condones the use of alcohol, he equally clearly doesn't see alcohol as a drug. Or, if I were to be a little more cynical, he's counting on the masses not seeing it that way.