By Tom Strode
Baptist Press
WASHINGTON — The U.S. House of Representatives’ vote Dec. 4 to decriminalize marijuana could prove devastating for some families and communities, Southern Baptist ethicist Russell Moore has warned.
The House passed in a nearly party-line vote, 228-164, the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act. The bill would end criminal penalties at the federal level for the possession, distribution and manufacture of marijuana.
The proposal is unlikely to go any further when it moves from the Democratic-controlled House to the Senate, where Republicans hold the majority. In the House, only five Republicans voted for the measure.
Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), said in written comments, “Marijuana legalization is unwise and disastrous for communities vulnerable to substance abuse. Pastors know this firsthand as they minister to families in their churches who have been harmed by the marijuana industry’s profit-driven efforts to romanticize mind-altering drugs.”
Dan Trippie, a Southern Baptist pastor in the Buffalo, N.Y., area, said in a March 2019 article on the ERLC’s website that recreational marijuana numbs its users and threatens the vulnerable. [Read more…]