Pope Francis’s visit to the U.S. has dominated much of the political discussion this week. Speaking at the White House, before Congress and at the United Nations, he has drawn attention to policy issues ranging from climate change to immigration to the death penalty.

And on Friday he even had something to say about the war on drugs.

After addressing the U.N. about traditional military conflicts, he added, “along the same lines I would mention another kind of conflict, which is not always so open yet is silently killing millions of people. Another kind of war, experienced by many of our societies as a result of the narcotics trade.”

Francis said that the illegal drug trade causes corruption “which has penetrated to the different levels of social, political, military, artistic and religious life” and had “given rise to a parallel structure which threatens the credibility of our institutions.”

The rhetoric sounds very similar to that of legalization advocates, who argue that ending prohibition and bringing the drug trade aboveground would take profits away from cartels and gangs that control the illegal trade and use violence and bribe officials to protect their marketshare.

But Francis is no fan of legalization, at least as of now. “Drug addiction is an evil, and with evil there can be no yielding or compromise,” he said last year at a drug enforcement conference in Rome. “To think that harm can be reduced by permitting drug addicts to use narcotics in no way resolves the problem.”

He said that proposals “to legalize so-called ‘recreational drugs’ are not only highly questionable from a legislative standpoint, but they fail to produce the desired effects.”

In his new remarks on Friday at the U.N., Francis said that the war on drugs is “taken for granted but poorly fought,” adding that …read more

Source:: Weed Feed