Boston Archdiocese Is Spending $850,000 To Fight Legal Marijuana
The Boston Archdiocese is betting big on fighting marijuana legalization.
Boston Archdiocese Is Spending $850,000 To Fight Legal Marijuana
Boston, Massachusetts – The Boston Archdiocese is spending $850,000 in an effort do defeat a state ballot to legalize marijuana. They claim that it is a threat to the Catholic Church.
The Catholic church is throwing $850,000 at anti-marijuana legalization in Massachusetts after claims that legal weed will harm their health and social-service programs. Boston archdiocese spokesman Terrence Donilon said, “It’s a recognition that, if passed, the law would have significantly detrimental impacts on our parishes, our ministries.”
This announcement of spending almost a million dollars to fight legal marijuana comes a week after Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley met with 40 interfaith leaders to discuss strategies to defeat the state ballot that would allow recreational marijuana use. The Boston Globe reports that O’Malley stated “making marijuana legal would exacerbate the opioid epidemic, entice more children to use drugs, hurt poor neighborhoods, and threaten public safety.”
Jim Borghesani, spokesman for the pro-marijuana group YES on 4 says that the archdiocese “has come up with a position that, frankly, we think is based on unfounded assumptions and junk science”. Borghesani also says that illegal marijuana has done “terrible harm” to people of color after their lives were ruined for being arrested over marijuana offenses.
A study done in October by the Pew Research Center shows that 57% of Unites States adults says that marijuana should be legal, while 37% are saying that it should be illegal. The study also states that
A decade ago, opinion on legalizing marijuana was nearly the reverse – just 32% favored legalization, while 60% were opposed.
View the whole study done by the Pew Research Center here.
The archdiocese anti-marijuana campaign has raised nearly $2.6 million while the pro-legalization campaign YES on 4 has raised $6.6 million so far.
Reports from officers in marijuana-legal states advise that marijuana DUIs are through the roof, and law enforcement officers do not yet have the proper training and equipment to handle the large number of people who choose to drive after using marijuana.
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