MarkostheGnostic said:

As I attempt to impress on kids as young as 11 in the 6th grade during a month of human growth and development, that we are not merely mammals, we are human beings, and the category 'being,' I tell them is a spiritual reality. I tell them that spiritual beings have intellect, emotions, free will and morals. I further tell them that mere mammals (like dogs and cats and rats and bats) are amoral, "neither moral or immoral" [Webster], but that humans can choose to act like mere mammals, and so copulate like animals, or we can choose to be human beings in which case we recognize that everything we do is either mostly right, or mostly wrong. (As BE HERE NOW taught me at age 19, "All Your Acts Will Be Consecrated').

I'll add that Miami has been the #1 US city for HIV infections (sometimes #2 under NYC) for years; that I deal with STD infections in middle school, and I've had girls who planned a pregnancy and delivered at age 12 or came to us from elementary school pregnant and received an abortion!) Aside from the encouragement of Compassion for themselves and an infant coming through the loins of a child, I am trying to encourage simple survival. Morality is pre-eminently practical.

As to drug use, like everything else, it depends. Cocaine and heroin, for example, require lots of immorality from fearful oppression by drug lords to the mass murders that follow every step of the growth, manufacture and transport to the user. The selfishness and further crime by the user creates further suffering in the world. Either one cares, or one does not, and one then acts accordingly - morally or immorally - Compassionately or non-Compassionately. Growing one's own cannabis or fungus for home use seems to be harmless enough on the other hand. People aren't killing or being killed for these things.

I am assuming here a morality based upon Compassion, not legality. MDMA was legal once, so was LSD. The arbitrary laws changed for all the wrong reasons, and look what happens to those who possess or sell these things now. Imagine putting a first-time seller of LSD, with no prior arrests, in prison for 15 years in California! Talk of immorality - a fate worse than death in my estimation - and for what?!

---

niteowl said:

The only reason these "hard" drugs (heroin,cocaine...) are linked to "bad things" is because they are illegal. If all drugs were legalized, their would be no negative effects except to the person using.

---