Christian Liberty: Christians and the Use of Recreational Marijuana

We can extend this basic argument (and John pretty much does) to a lot of drugs where it’s hard to use just a little and stay in the “not severely intoxicated” stage. Well said. It is perhaps plausible for someone to say “well, I just put this much in a whole batch of brownies and I never get that far”, but I have to admit that, given my love for chocolate, it wouldn’t be entirely plausible for me to avoid ending up like Maureen Dowd and Dom DeLuise combined.

What about a woman who suffers from debilitating migraines and the doctor offers to prescribe her medical marijuana, and no other treatment option has worked, and she’s been suffering for nearly 10 years, and her friends tell her it’s worked for them?

My response to Tyler’s question above. Really, if we wouldn’t fault someone with serious back pain or terminal cancer pain for using painkillers to cope, painkillers far more addictive and dangerous than THC, why would we tell the person suffering from migraines that she couldn’t have a nibble of Maureen Dowd’s candy bar? I know that I sure appreciated the painkillers (including morphine) that I was given when my gallbladder acted up in 2007! And yes, coming out of surgery, I was probably “stoned”, coming in and out of lucidity. It wasn’t anything where I said “wow, this is great, let’s do it again”, but my mind was altered at the time and I’m really glad I didn’t say anything TOO dumb!

The use of the word “recreational” in the title and throughout the post is intentional.

I know, and saw the distinction. I just thought I’d ask the question, because someone else would bring it up sooner or later.

Well, in that case, I’ll let others fight it out over the medicinal use of marijuana. There is too much information and data that I haven’t looked at regarding the medicinal use of marijuana for me to feel comfortable publicly sharing my half-formed opinions about it.

I was with him till he dismissively assumed that you can’t use cannabis without getting to the point of drunkenness as prohibited by God’s Word. As one who smoked/vaped half a gram of high-grade bud a day for six years, I know better.

I haven’t used any for a couple of months, since I no longer need it for pain relief (I used it to get off oxycodone, which I took for three years after back surgery). I’ve lost 150 lbs this year with diet and exercise, much decreasing my pain. But at first, the pain was excruciating every time I started walking on that treadmill. Thank God for cannabis! I smoked/vaped immediately before going into the gym, and it helped me push through the pain.

And as I walked on that treadmill for an hour every morning, I did it while reading a reasonably serious book propped up in front of me. Is that what you would expect from a drunkard? Discipline? Hard work? Cultivating the life of the mind?

This gentleman may have been a drunkard in the way he used cannabis, but I assure you that he doesn’t speak for every cannabis user. Not by a long shot.

A regular user with a stabilized tolerance can reliably smoke/vape 0.1g of high-grade cannabis without becoming any more intoxicated than he would by drinking one beer, if that.

1 gram of weed is enough to roll one joint with. Assuming normal physiology, someone recreationally smoking an entire joint will get high. Full stop.

Now, that being said, I chose my words very carefully, as in “recreational” and “normal physiology.” Your explanation for why you were ingesting marijuana removes you from what I wrote about.

I almost put an addendum predicting responses like the one provided by Todd Mitchell. Every time I write or speak about this, no matter the words I use, people who didn’t/don’t ingest for recreational purposes and didn’t/don’t have a normal physiology chime in and say, “he’s wrong.”

When I described it to my physician and mentioned 0.1g, he replied, “Oh, so just a one-ie.” Call that a joint and you’ll get laughed at by anyone who knows better.

I rarely smoked joints. You know why? They were a pain to put out and save the smelly thing for later — because even a small one was enough for at least three sessions. Definitely too big to smoke in one session responsibly!

To suggest that my physiology is abnormal takes your argument from anecdote into a wholly speculative direction, no matter how loudly you say, “Full stop.”

And to dismiss my experience as being medicinal simply 1) begs the question of what recreational use might be 2) ignores my argument because it is damaging to yours. At issue is the effect of a microdose of cannabis, not the intent of the user.

Are you actually arguing for the use of 1/10th of a gram? I thought that was a typo.

Did you stop reading my article before you finished it in order to make a comment? Because I’m pretty sure that 1/10th of a gram fits within my two to three drags. I don’t remember how many drags it took me to finish a joint, and frankly I never kept track. But 20 to 30 seems about right, if not high (no pun intended). And that raises the question, recreationally speaking, what’s the point of smoking 1/10th of gram?

I’m not ignoring your argument, I’m saying it doesn’t apply to what I wrote because I simply did not write about the medicinal use of marijauna. And if you don’t understand the difference between medicinal use and recreational use, I don’t know how to break it down for you other than the one (medicinal) is for, well, medicinal use - pain management, for example. The other (recreational) is because the user wants to ingest marijuana for no other reason than they want to because they enjoy it.

I’m not assuming that your physiology isn’t normal. Your back surgery, subsequent pain, and narcotic use alters physiology. That’s not my fault. How and to what extent, I don’t know, which is one of the reasons (just one of the reasons) why I stay out of the medicinal use argument.

Look, dude, I’ll grant you that you know far more about the medicinal use of marijuana than I do. But I don’t think you know very much about the “recreational” weed culture. Using the words “smoke in one session responsibly” in reference to a single joint will get you laughed at.

So, all recreational use results in drunkenness, because if it doesn’t, it’s not recreational?

I’m a member of NORML. In earlier life, I spent 10 years as a street cop in the Twin Cities. I’ve been around the block, and I’ve seen plenty, too — enough to know better than to attempt the kind of categorical syllogisms you are peddling.

There is a tiny amount that a person can smoke recreationally that won’t get them high. I acknowledged that in the article. My question is, why would they? In other words, if a person isn’t using it for medicinal reasons, what’s the purpose of smoking weed if not to get high? Especially since it takes so very little of it to get a person high.

For the same reason one might consume alcohol in moderation — to gladden the heart without getting drunk.