I was trying to cover all my bases, but I would say that getting drunk is sinful, and if you can't even have a drop without becoming drunk, then drinking a drop would be sinful.

Technically, I guess if you could smoke pot and not get high it would be okay, but it seems like a strange thing to do. If you did it only for the taste you could smoke weed without the thc or just not inhale. Of course the fact that it's illegal is a problem, but this is assuming you're in Colorado or something.

Well you get "high" from endorphins if you exercise, but that's not the same thing, that's a natural body function.

Cigs are obviously bad, although you could also argue that eating fast food every day is just as bad, and likely worse. Anything that obviously does damage to your body is likely wrong.

I drink a lot of green tea, and have a strict diet, it's supposed to help.

Then most are immoral even if just drinking one drink imo. The only way to get not to be would be to build tolerance levels through sinning. Or drinking so slow to the point no one does.

Dont think we are going to come to an agreement on this.
Not really a problalm for me. Legality doesn't make something moral or immoral to me. And sometimes breaking the law is the right thing to do.
Right. So the high isnt the problem.

Yeah id agree. Its about consequence.
Still its continued use, even if limited use, hurts you. To me thats a bad consequence. So it would be wrong. More wrong the someone smoking pot once a month to chill and relax.

It's never going to be on the horizon. The CC actually uses this drug in their ceremonies when they worship their god and Jesus himself created this drug out of nothing more than H2O and then distributed it, following god's own instructions apparently. They believe that a drink containing Ethanol represents the blood of their main figure of worship and actually becomes his blood. Ethanol...

So it's easy to see why the CC are ok with alcohol, why the pope is ok with it, God approves of it after all, but to admit to alcohol being a 'drug' would be calling Jesus a drug pusher and that is NEVER going to happen. It would be a huge PR own goal. (*It's a shame Jesus didn't push some weed, the world would probably be a nicer place).

Like many human behaviours, when we stop taking them for granted and try to see them as if we were doing it for the first time, as if we trying to explain it to a visiting alien, this Catholic thing with alcohol is truly bizarro. If Jesus had made beer out of water, they'd be drinking beer in church, telling us it's christ's blood, and considering it a holy ritual and we'd all think THAT was normal. Brewing and religion, what strange bedfellows.

A fervent drug user and now a fervent worshiper. I think you replaced drugs with religion but there endeth my lay speculation about why, before it starts. Maybe there's a kernel of an insight there, that 'drugs' are a competitor and a threat to the church. They don't want us in 'thrall' to drugs and alcohol when they'd prefer we were in thrall to them instead.

My guess is that if the bible didn't mention wine (no surprise that it did, it's of it's time) then alcohol too would be off the book.s Unfortunately for Muslims though, Muhammed wasn't a drinker so that's forbidden to them too. At least they're not guilty of a double standard like the Catholic church, Islam forbids all intoxicants.

**** anyone who wants marijuana to be illegal

You use the word "too" wrongly. Like earlier I am asking about your reasons, your thoughts and the basis for your arguments. What I have or have not read is not relevant to this question, and your sarcastic tone comes of as rather bizarre.

To return us to the origin of my questions, you specifically stated that alcohol was a high risk drug in relation to addiction and Marijuana had a low risk of addiction. You have now provided us with some background information to this claim. Let us look at that information: 9-10% of the (presumably regular) users become addicted to the drug and if (as your own touted source claims) and "In the US, as of 2013, cannabis is the most commonly identified illicit substance used by people admitted to treatment facilities."

If we had replaced cannabis with an arbitrary drug name in the above description, would you hold that "low risk of addiction" was a suitable description?

Not as bizarre as your hounding him on this point. What is your point exactly and perhaps you might get to it quickly please? This thread doesn't require an examination of exactly how addictive marijuana is because that could fall anywhere between 'non-addictive' and 'as addictive as alcohol' and it wouldn't change the scope of the discussion which is actually about the pope's apparent double standard and his use of a slippery slope argument regarding 'drug use' and 'drug addiction' when discussing alcohol and marijuana.

So where are you going with this?

So essentially if someone says "Marijuana has a low risk of addiction", you classify asking questions posed in a neutral, fair and non-insulting manner around this point as "hounding" and "bizarre". Even though this is a statement that surely should lie at the heart of the debate, and thus the most important to clarify of them all.

I think that speaks for itself.

No, I classify hounding as hounding. No matter how politely you're pursuing it, I don't think that this issue does lie at the heart of this debate and I've explained why so I fail to see why you persist in dogging Uke with it.

This thread is not about whether or not marijuana should be legal or how addictive it is, in fact it's irrelevant what any of us think about marijuana, all that matters is that we agree that it is rightly classed as a recreational drug. The debate is about how the pope may be exhibiting a double standard by treating alcohol by a different set of principles when decreeing that we should not use drugs. Marijuana could be the most addictive drug known to mankind and it still wouldn't change that we also need to treat alcohol as a drug to be included in statements about drugs. Do you disagree with that?

I see your point, from the perspective of a Christian, if there is any doubt as to whether drinking is a sin or not, I would advise to just not drink. I think the line is slightly blurrier than pot, because you can drink and not become drunk (beer over an hour), but with pot you feel the effects, it's the point. But yeah, I see what you're saying about getting to the point where you are able to drink and not feel it.

I see it where you should always abide by the laws of the land, unless it directly contradicts a statue of the Lord. Although, I rarely make a full stop at stop signs, cause who's got the time for that.

I would say it's not ONLY about the high, but imagine someone who does nothing but run all day, because they crave the endorphins, I would consider that an obsession, and thus wrong.

The thing with pot is that (to me) the use of it means that I need it because I need to rely on something to make me feel better. It's that need that I see as wrong, more so than the high. That's why I said intentions matter. If you have a glass of wine with dinner, and get a little fuzzy, it's not the same (imo) to that of purposely getting high to feel better, even if drinking the glass of wine was not right either.

Reminds me of what some comedian said, “I stopped partying because I realized coke and booze are gateway drugs to Christianity". Fwiw, I spent plenty of time getting high as a Christian. Pretty shameful of me, I know.

As has been stated to you ad nauseum, claiming double standard on the grounds that both are "recreational drugs" and should thus be treated equally is very strange.

For example: You are implicitly arguing that caffeine and heroin should be treated identically, if not one is employing a double standard. They are both recreational drugs.

Lol at the Tylonel thing again, amazing how confusing this is to you. Yes it is clear we are talking about "so called recreational drugs" and/or "illicit drugs". We do get to reference the same thing he is referencing in his paragraph in the plain meaning.

Notice what you left out in your examples: pot. The meaning is clear and obvious: EVERY TYPE of use of pot is to be rejected. No? Unless you think "every type of use" of pot actually means "only the types of use by addicts". You have tried to spin this about being about "drug addiction" only, but to believe that one has to take the word "every" and instead mean "not every". It is a truly bizarre reinterpretation of the phrase without a shred of justification.

Of course, alcohol is also commonly called a recreational drug, one might even say it is a so called recreational drug. Note that every type of alcohol use is NOT rejected by the Pope. Yet presumably every type of pot use is. If we wildly distort his meaning as you wish to only be about drug addiction, casual use of both should be allowed. Yet he wants to ban only the one.

Well then, answer my repeated querry and provide YOUR preferred phraseology that replaces the "every type of [so called recreational/illicit] drug use". Either way, as soon as you replace "every type" with "only some types" or whatever you prefer in your phraseology, you will be completely distorting the only obvious meaning of his phrase.

Lol...right...try to answer the question. How does this change the interpretation of "no to every type of drug use" depending on adding the so called in. Okay so you want to make it about uses not drugs...so can you give a situation where "no to every type of recreational drug use" means something different then "no to every type of so called recreational drug"? Is it different for, say, a casual pot smoker? What? You are obsessing that I have screwed something up by neglecting these two words. Notice that since you have yet to give an explicit replacement of this phrase in EITHER the so called or not so called versions - please do so.

Vintage Aaron.

I presume it is well established that marijuana is substantially less dangerous on a variety of metrics than alcohol, in particular that it is less addictive than alcohol. Am I wrong on this? I don't particularly have an interest in doing a literature search to back up this claim so you get the 10 second google only, but if you think that claim is false by all means YOU can do the literature search to show that it is wrong. As in, unless someone is seriously contesting a claim - and putting in the work themselves to show evidence why it is false - I'm not going to spend a tonne of effort finding all the stats that you can google just as well as I can. If this was a central plank of the arguments in this thread then I might feel compelled, but I only need "roughly similar" for my arguments ITT to work.

Not surprising. Alcohol isn't illicit and so it doesn't get included and pot is vastly more common than any other illicit drug. If I was going around saying addiction from pot isn't an issue at all then maybe you ought to be pointing out that error, but it seems like you are mainly mad because when comparing alcohol and pot I used relative terms like high and low. Hard to take your posts seriously.

It would be were that my argument, but you still don't seem to understand what I'm actually saying... see below...

No I'm not. I'm arguing, and I've explained this ad nauseum, that alcohol is a 'drug' too, also used recreationally, and therefore should be included in the pope's 'don't use drugs' instruction, rather than being treated differently. For alcohol not to be included is where the double standard is being applied.

So your interpretation, that my argument is that recreational drugs should be treated equally is a misunderstanding on your part. I'm not arguing that nor would I, because it would be ridiculous.

[Although, now I understand your misunderstanding, your pursuit of Uke on the point of how addictive marijuana may or may not be makes a lot more sense to me, hopefully now though you can see why it's not relevant]

I figured it would be too on the nose.

*Yawn* You're running into a conceptual brick wall. Keep saying the word "type" over and over again and maybe the type fairy will appear.

By your standard, a cancer patient who is using marijuana to alleviate pain is a recreational drug user. And people who have been prescribed ambien is a recreational drug user. And drinking a coke is a recreational drug user. And so on. And so on. And on. And on.

I did. You're just unhappy because I rewrote the full statement and am not making a one-to-one word replacement or whatever it is you're wanting to find.

If you don't like that, what if I remove a couple words?

Are those couple words really causing you that much difficulty?

Type type type type type...

I have given examples above. Before this post, I brought up the fact that prescription pain killers are also used recreationally. Maybe you think recreational drugs includes only pot and alcohol?

It's easy when the obvious thing is right, and I'm stating the obvious thing. You're the one who is being convoluted and calling soda drinkers recreational drug users.

You are confusing the important part. It is the every or the any, not the "type" that you are misusing. Your problem is that you keep switching up "every" and "any" with "not every" or "some" or "only for drug addicts" or whatever. Since you haven't given a precise restatement of his phrase it is hard to know exactly what the "whatever" really is, other than it having something to do with drug addiction.

Let's try this differently because apparently what is a recreational drug is REALLY confusing you if you think that I have suggested that soda drinkers are recreational drug users. Let's use his other phrase: illicit drugs. Hopefully that will prevent this continued nonsense about tylonel and soda which exactly nobody - and certainly not me as you falsely accuse - thinks he is referring to.

So the phrase is this: "No to every type of [illicit] drug use". When someone says "every" they don't actually mean the opposite of every. They don't mean some. They actually mean every. That is why they used the word every, and not the word some.

He is against legalizing these illicit drugs full stop. He even says no to legalization "however limited". Entirely consistent with an absolute rejection of every type of illicit drug use. Presumably this is including medical marijunana for cancer patients which would be a limited legalization of an illicit drug. If he didn't mean this, he shouldn't have said every when he actually meant some. Thankfully, there is no indication outside of your spurious reinterpretation that his is what he means. When you hear hoof beats, think horses not zebras. When you read every actually think every and don't think some.

I'm "unhappy" because what you typed out just doesn't relate to what he actually said. The reason your shortened statement doesn't look remotely like a one-to-one word replacement is that you are simply never going to be able to make a statement about every type of illicit drug use magically transform into only some type of illicit drug use, no matter how desperately you wave your hands to save your failed argument.

I am not "mad" and I am not "hounding" you. The word "illicit" was my own Wikipedia edit, because it was omitted originally and I thought that was weird so I checked the reference where the word was present and added the correction. I could have used the original wording in my reply to you if my desire was somehow to argue for argument's sake. You can check the Wikipedia edit history.

Nor have I contested anything and I have not asked for how to find information. The only thing I have done is ask you two linked questions regarding your basis for your statement that marijuana is a drug with a low risk of addiction. You have responded with sarcasm every time.

When you can't take critical questions seriously, you really need to start evaluating where you are at.

From your OP:

I'm still not seeing how those conflict TD. I think you're just failing to get my point.

The pope thinks we should not use any drugs (by which we are assuming him to mean recreational drugs since he mentions them specifically elsewhere in his speech and names marijuana specifically), and that 'drug use is a scourge' and yet he uses a drug himself, alcohol . It seems that he doesn't include alcohol in with the other recreational drugs, he's applying different principles to it when marijuana and alcohol are 'similar' in that they're both drugs and both used recreationally (there endeth pretty much all similarity). How is that not a double standard?

This is not a conversation about the relative impacts or addictive properties of recreational drugs.

Help explain to me why alcohol is being treated differently by the pope, why he's not calling for us to stop using it too, and how it's not a double standard?

You can't see how "I am not saying recreational drugs should be treated equally" and "These two drugs should be treated equally as they are both recreational drugs" are in conflict? I find that hard to believe.

I have no problems seeing that your case is different from what you are actually arguing. That is not my problem. I think this is a subject that is serious enough to warrant precise argumentation.

Wow.... you're doing that thing that fundamentalists do. "Every" means "every" "every" single time "every" is used. It's a stupid way to read things. It's especially stupid as it pertains to rhetorical phrasings.

As I said, if you're reading it that way then

1) Tylenol is a drug. The Pope must be against that because "every drug" means "every drug." But that's not the position you want to take with the word "every." You just mean "every drug" that isn't one of the exempted drugs.

2) Caffeine is a recreational drug.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recreational_drug_use

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks3/sc...gs/revision/8/

So if "every" really means "every" here, then the Pope has turned Mormon and is against "every" use of caffeine. But you don't want to accept that either. Clearly, "every recreational drug" means "some recreational drugs."

3) So clearly, "every" doesn't mean "every" unless you're being absurd.

Note very carefully, the term illicit implies illegality.

Do you think the Pope should be endorsing that people do illegal activities?

It's true that he probably is against medicinal marijuana. But I haven't seen anything explicit on that topic (barring your "every" means "every" "every" single time position -- which is ludicrous).

By the way, do you consider "medical marijuana" to be a recreational drug? Because marijuana is a recreational drug, and by your definition that makes people who use medical marijuana recreational drug users, too. It's the same type of drug, after all.

It's not actually that difficult to read and interpret language. Sadly, many fundamentalist-minded people fail at it.

No. You're unhappy because you don't agree what I've said.

See how hard you have to push this "every" means "every" angle in order for your position to work? That's a fundy-level of intellectual engagement.

Why is that hard to believe?

Again you're not phrasing what I'm saying accurately (I'm referring to the second sentence in quotation marks), rather, you're phrasing it as you've understood it, and that understanding is faulty.

I'm not saying that, for example, that as recreational drugs, Heroin and Marijuana should be treated the same. I am saying that they should both be treated as recreational drugs, because that's what they are. In the same way that a car is not recreational drug and I wouldn't expect it to be included in a speech about recreational drugs, I would expect it to be treated differently to marijuana but it should be treated 'equally' as a car in a conversation about cars, even if it is not the equal of those other cars. I do consider alcohol to be a recreational drug and so it should have been included in the pope's 'don't use drugs' instruction, but it isn't because he's applying different principles to how alcohol is treated and that is a double standard.

Marijuana and alcohol should equally be treated as recreational drugs, but not treated as equal recreational drugs, and not as something other than a recreational drug. One characteristic that they share equally, is that they are both recreational drugs.

See now? Perhaps the word 'equally' is causing confusion and we should replace it with something else.

No, you're understanding of what I'm arguing is different from what I'm actually arguing. When you understand the difference you'll see why the relative addictiveness of various recreational drugs is completely irrelevant to the discussion this thread was created for.

Well, now you are stuck in a loop. I can only respond by once again referring to your own OP:

It is there. Written with your own words. There isn't much more to say.