Pleasure Drugs and Classical Virtues

by Paul M. Bischke

Evil Spirits - Distilled and Fermented

Virtue Guiding Pleasure

The Bible and the church fathers say nothing explicitly about modern drugs. But we are logically entitled to apply their teachings on alcohol to pleasure drugs that are equally or less harmful in objective terms. Indeed some, like St. Thomas Aquinas, were intentionally general in their remarks, speaking inclusively about mood-altering "liquors." 8 This reasonably includes many nostrums like "Vin Mariani," one of the coca wine tonics that were popular and reputable in 19th century America - even while anti-alcohol rhetoric raged.9 Beyond this, the cornerstone of the Christian virtues, prudence, can guide our response to drugs even if they are riskier than alcohol. Yet the obvious starting point is the classical virtue of temperance.

Temperance is the second of the four cardinal virtues spelled out by St. Thomas Aquinas ("cardinal" means fundamental).10 The other three are prudence, justice, and fortitude. Virtues are broad and robust ethical principles that apply to many situations. The motive of virtue is to enact and embody what is good, right, and fitting. In contrast to modern secular values emphasizing "appropriate" observable behavior and discouraging deviance, the virtues were concerned with the formation of conscience and will that would produce right action. Far from merely eliminating deviance, the teaching of virtue was meant to produce authentic moral agents who could discern the rightness of social customs and act accordingly, defying custom if necessary. Virtue, in the classical sense, is a far deeper matter than conforming to social norms and it has a decidedly active moral character. 

There's an interesting commonality between the Temperance-era activists and those proclaiming the ideal of being "drug-free" today: neither of them are really advocating the Christian virtue of temperance at all. The great Christian apologist C. S. Lewis explained the true meaning of temperance in his book "Mere Christianity":

"[Temperance] now usually means teetotalism. But [originally], it meant nothing of the sort. Temperance referred not specially to drink, but to all pleasures; and it meant not abstaining but going the right length and no further. ... Mohammedanism, not Christianity, is the teetotal religion. ... It may be the duty of a particular Christian, or of any Christian at a particular time, to abstain from strong drink, either because he ... cannot drink at all without drinking too much, or ... wants to give the money to the poor, or because he is with people who are inclined to drunkenness and must not encourage them by drinking himself. But the whole point is that he is abstaining, for a good reason, from something which he does not condemn and which he likes to see other people enjoying. ... The moment he starts saying [the pleasures] are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning." 11

We're likely to feel pretty uncomfortable applying Lewis's statement about alcohol to illegal pleasure drugs. We've heard so many frightening things: that children or drivers will use drugs with disastrous consequences; that they cannot be used at all without being abused; that they make people violent, crazy, and so forth. But what do the virtues say?

The nimble principle of temperance demands abstinence when it's needed: abstinence from pleasure drugs is appropriate for kids and, generally speaking, for expectant mothers; abstinence from anything that impairs skill and judgment is necessary when driving, operating machinery, etc.

Truth and Justice

Many of our other fears about criminalized drugs are based on falsehoods: exaggerations, and distortions propagated by anti-drug activists inside and outside of government.12 To a lesser degree, lying had been common in the anti-alcohol era, as well. Doctors and ex-drunkards swore that drinkers might burst into flames if they breathed on a lighted candle, burn like a torch as alcoholic fumes seeped through their skin, or simply explode like a keg of gunpowder.12b 

From the perennial "Reefer Madness" notion of pot-crazed killers to the fried-egg commercials declaring "this is your brain on drugs," outright lying and dishonest fearmongering about drugs have become chronic in modern America. Even if such claims are spread to "save our children," they still violate the virtue of justice. Why? Because this scary misinformation, blaming drugs for crime, violence, and every vice under the sun, has caused Americans to respond on false premises. Journalist Dan Baum's book "Smoke and Mirrors" describes how America's modern punitive drug laws came about -- born of misinformation that's been popularized for political gain. 

The popular assertion that drugs cause violence deserves special attention because it's part of so many political speeches. In "Violence: Our Deadly Epidemic and Its Causes," Harvard psychiatrist James Gilligan points out that the only drug truly linked to violence is alcohol. Oddly, it is the drugs that decrease aggression (marijuana and heroin) and those that have no aggregate effect on violence either way (psychedelics, cocaine, and other stimulants) that have been made illegal.13 Drugs themselves don't cause violent crime; but the lure of huge profits to be made selling drugs that are forbidden yet still in demand -- that causes lots of crime. People needing money to support bad habits with drugs that sell at black-market prices also commit many crimes -- but that's a market issue, not a drug issue per se. In his book "America's Longest War," Yale law professor Steven Duke describes the twelve ways that crime is caused, not by drugs, but by the illegal status of those drugs.14 

Justice and Prudence

Beyond dishonesty, the Drug War violates justice in at least three other notable ways. First, it punishes those who do no tangible harm. When they've nabbed a druggie, police and judges don't ask whether he's a true abuser or is instead among the 85% of users who keep their use under control.15 They don't ask if his use has him shirking his duties; his only offense may be violating the code of abstinence. The Judaeo-Christian tradition distinguished itself from the pagan world by adopting the principle of "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth" to transform revenge or merely symbolic punishment into proportional penalties and just restitution. America's punishments against drug convicts violate this basic principle. Drug users and sellers often receive harsher sentences than people convicted of manslaughter or rape.16 Such punishments are inherently unjust and grossly disproportionate.

Secondly, the Drug War gives license to human-rights abuses in Latin America where right-wing thugs now murder peasants in the name of America's War on Drugs instead of our war on communism.17 The Drug War's third injustice is this: its enforcement focuses in fact, if not by design, on minority groups, punishing Blacks and Latinos most severely.18

The Drug War is expensive19 and largely ineffective20; it inadvertently creates a violent black market21, threatens civil liberties22, crowds prisons23, and interferes with AIDS prevention.24 The government's refusal to re-direct or even discuss its drug-control methods in light of these unintended consequences constitutes a violation of prudence -- the virtue that discerns right action in light of all the features of the particular situation at hand. "Prohibition," said Catholic philosopher Charles de Koninck of Montreal, "is not a solution, for it is contrary to a natural right, which, if violated, will not be slow to avenge itself."24b Although his comments were immediately directed at alcohol, the backlash of prohibition he describes is clearly evident in the modern situation with drugs. Prudence demands that our response to a problem must live up to the adequatio standard, being adequate by responding to all important aspects justly and effectively, as much as possible. Prudence is thus able to deal with the divergent and complex problem that substance abuse really is; prohibitionism denies the complexity, insists that the problem is neatly convergent, and that total abstinence is "the only certain preventive." 24c

Failed Fortitude: Of Hypocrites and Scapegoats

Fortitude is the courage, strength, and tenacity to act justly, temperately, and prudently in the face of obstacles, temptations, and diversions. The Drug War's targeting of minority groups displays a lack of fortitude. Furthermore, the Drug War doesn't employ its stern anti-drug enforcement methods against alcohol and tobacco because it doesn't dare to challenge the cultural majority. Yet these are the two pleasure drugs that cause the most harm in American society -- and their greater harmfulness is not just due to their wider use 24d. Tobacco and alcohol together kill around 500,000 Americans annually; illegal drugs claim about 10,000 lives each year.25 An enforcement system that's not based on principle, but that attacks marginalized groups while leaving powerful groups alone, can only be called cowardly.

Two glaring ironies emerge when you study the contemporary literature of the alcohol Prohibition period: (1) alcohol Prohibitionists blamed alcohol for essentially the same list of social ills in the 1890s that drug Prohibitionists blame on drugs in the 1990s (crime, violence, vice, etc.), but the 19th-century claims about alcohol (human-combustion rhetoric aside) have turned out to be much more truthful than 20th-century claims about drugs; (2) the alcohol Prohibitionists had the courage to confront the majority culture with its pleasure-drug excesses, whereas today's drug warriors do not. 

Jesus didn't let the hypocrites and scapegoaters of his day off the hook easily. Might a modern gospel advise America's smoking/drinking anti-drug Pharisees to remove the mote of alcohol and tobacco issues from their eyes before trying to remove the speck from the eyes of drug users? 

Many Americans are eager to see drug users and sellers punished. Perhaps Jesus would have confronted this mob like he confronted those who surrounded the woman taken in adultery: 'Let the one among you who has never been drunk and never patronized an alcohol dealer slam the prison door on this druggie.'

Good or Evil?

When I explain my views, I'm often asked, "Are you saying drugs aren't so bad?" No, I'm not asserting anything so vague or timid. I am trying to unearth the traditional Judaeo-Christian position regarding pleasure drugs that has been obscured by 175 years of distortion by well-meaning popular religionists, and that position is bold: it affirms that the whole of the created order is good, including the opium poppy, the peyote cactus, the coca bush, the hemp plant, and the vintner's grape.25b These psychoactive plants have been put to innocent social and actively beneficial uses in many societies, including our own. This is a matter of historical record.26

If applying the virtue of temperance to drugs strikes modern ears like a sham biblical argument endorsing bank robbery, it's easy to see why: repetition impresses the mind. Prohibition-era Americans heard countless sermons about "the liquor traffic's wicked business" of selling "accursed liquors" in "the drunkard's pit," for saloons were peddling "the devil in solution."27 Moderation with alcohol sounded as impossible to them as moderate use of other pleasure drugs sounds to Americans who've heard endless modern horror stories about drugs. 

But there's more to it than that: somehow today it's hard for us to comprehend how sharply the Christian approval of temperate pleasure changes to stern disapproval when moderation gives way to excess. 

"[Wine] has been created to make men glad. Wine drunk in season and temperately is rejoicing of heart and gladness of soul. Wine drunk to excess is bitterness of soul, with provocation and stumbling." 
(Sirach 31: 27b-29)

There's no permissive slack here. Approval and rebuke are side by side, as when a parent trusts a child with a treasured possession saying "use it, but don't break it." This is exactly the attitude that allows the Judaeo-Christian tradition to call the creation "very good" without endorsing human abuses. 

Questions like "Are you saying alcohol and drugs aren't so bad?" arise from a distortion of conscience that confuses abstinence with temperance and condemns temperance as permissiveness. This classical Christian virtue has become a secular scandal. But as Aquinas said, "The risk of scandal does not justify blurring the truth of the doctrine." 28 The doctrine at stake here is basic: "And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good." 28b The Church has rebuffed many heretics who denied this truth.28c But in the reversal of meanings for temperance, this old heresy returns. Drugs and drinks are evil creatures to be shunned rather than tamed.

With the meaning of temperance lost, the other virtues on this matter collapsed also; for the virtues tend to rise and fall together. If the creatures we call drugs and drink were inherently evil, no words would be too harsh; devils merit unrelenting war. Dragon-slaying heroes ignore prudence; crusading warriors deny the humanity of their foes. The right balance of virtue has been replaced by a melodrama, imprudent, unjust, and violent; a war on pleasure drugs indeed, but an unholy war.

St. Chrysostom said, "Wine makes not drunkenness; but intemperance produces it. Do not accuse that which is the workmanship of God [wine], but accuse the madness of a fellow mortal. Otherwise you ... are treating [God] with contempt." As for those who failed to distinguish the goodness of wine from the evil of drunkenness, Chrysostom chided them as "the simple ones among our brethren." 29

Luther, Calvin, Wesley

By accepting the abstinence ideal, modern American Christians have strayed a long way from the teachings of the great Reformation and denominational leaders, as well. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, approved of using wine and beer, but not distilled spirits.30 Some of the more articulate Temperance activists followed his example: they issued informational lists of alcoholic drinks, ranking them from temperate beer to intemperate vodka on the basis of potency. Their principle is clinically sound 31 and it applies to all other pleasure drugs as well: the less concentrated the psychoactive ingredient, the more manageable the drug. Such reasoning expresses both temperance and prudence, but our laws have spurned this wisdom.

Of a tankard of beer Luther said, "next to a fervent Lord's Prayer and a good heart, there's no better antidote to care." 32 John Calvin said, "It is permissible to use wine not only for necessity, but also to make us merry." 33 Those who think these statements are 'unhealthy' or permissive will be positively annoyed by Luther's teaching on self-control:

"In Christendom it will not do to issue laws, so that there is a general rule pertaining to self-control. For people are not alike. One is strong another weak by nature... . Therefore everyone should learn to know himself, what he can do and what he can stand." 34

Espousing true Christian temperance, Luther and Calvin speak of joyful freedom kept in control by personal judgment and responsibility. Drug warriors, espousing abstinence ("Just say no!"), demand unquestioning obedience on pain of punishment. They leave no place for the freedom and conscience that are hallmarks of the Judaeo-Christian tradition (especially of St. Paul). And their punitive attitude stands in stark contrast to St. Augustine's advice for responding to intemperance: "such things are cured not by bitterness, severity and harshness, but by teaching rather than prohibition, by gentle admonitions rather than threats." 35

Abstinence, Temperance: Shadow and Substance

The well-known Women's Christian Temperance Union was one of several national abstinence advocates, in the company of myriad local groups like "The St. Paul Clerical Total Abstinence Society" in my hometown. Most of these groups cited verses like "wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler" 36 to argue that abstinence is a biblical mandate. One book making these arguments bore the title The Bible a Total Abstinence Book: Jesus Christ a Total Abstainer. 37 Its central claim, that the Bible's many favorable mentions of wine referred to unfermented grape juice, was repudiated by biblical scholars after and even during the Temperance Era38 and modern archaeology makes it clear that fermented wine was a non-scandalous part of ancient Jewish life.39 A significant minority of Christian abstinence advocates acknowledged that teetotalism was a more stringent standard than Scripture demands, but, nonetheless, the right standard for the social climate of their own day.40 The little known Catholic Total Abstinence Union took this stand; they advocated voluntary abstinence, but were wary of criminalizing alcohol.41 Similarly, some Protestant anti-liquor activists believed in addressing alcohol abuse by appealing to individuals rather than enacting coercive legislation, a position they called "gospel temperance."41b

Another little-known Christian organization opposed Prohibition while expressing its strong concern about problem drinking; the True Temperance Association wanted society to base its policies on the Christian virtue of temperance rather than the popular ideal of abstinence.42 The great Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton was a member. One of his fellow members explained the group's anti-prohibition, pro-temperance stance as follows:

"I do not think it would be desirable to make this a nation of teetotalers, if we could. The desire for drink is an instinct to be guided, not extinguished." 43

Ironically, it was only after Prohibition ended that our society made authentic Christian temperance the standard, by regulating rather than criminalizing alcohol, as Chesterton's group had recommended.

According to the classical Christian tradition, the abstinence ideal simultaneously goes too far and not far enough: it goes too far by calling parts of God's creation evil and enforcing its extreme standard on everyone; but regarding conscience, abstinence doesn't go far enough -- it's a cop-out. You see, the Judaeo-Christian tradition doesn't let us off the hook by claiming that the evil lies outside of ourselves -- in drugs, or drug dealers, or booze, or sexual desire. The morality of enforced abstinence is much less demanding: it lets us believe drugs are the problem; it tries to atone for society's intemperance and the root problems underlying it by punishing a powerless scapegoat class, conveniently substituting self-righteousness for a painful examination of conscience. 

At first glance, classical Christian temperance seems permissive next to the "drug-free" ideal. But in the end, true temperance is a higher standard, more wholesome and more demanding on our society. It calls for responsible citizens, not obedient subjects. If there are pleasure drugs for which temperance is truly impossible (and this may be so), we must ascertain this in the just climate of truthfulness and respond with prudence informed by compassion. So far, America has not done this.

The classical Christian virtues hold great promise to heal our nation's wounds on the pleasure-drug issue: it's time to stop the war that's been inspired by the shallow "drug-free" ideal and act instead on the classical virtues, whose depth and suppleness are equal to the task of controlling addiction without resorting to injustice and folly.

Afterword (or Conclusion). When we investigate America's drug policy in light of the classical Christian virtues, it's clear that reform is urgently needed and that the direction of constructive change is to move away from intensive criminalization and toward sensible civil regulation. I have offered this analysis in the spirit of G.K. Chesterton's True Temperance Association: I would like to see our citizens embrace the standard of real temperance toward all pleasure drugs; and I would like to see our government adopt policies that embody justice, fortitude, and prudence. Our lack of these virtues on the drug issue is eating away at our nation. The fact that many Americans have viewed any retreat from the Drug War policy as unconscionable permissiveness is itself a symptom of the distorted conscience I have described above. The four cardinal virtues embody a broad range of classical Judaeo-Christian wisdom that has been a blessing to humanity for centuries. If what I am calling "sensible civil regulation" is guided by the deep and profound wisdom of these ancient virtues, it will surely consist of laws and policies that are more humane, wholesome, and effective than those based on the one-dimensional concept of abstinence.

References
1. Iglehart (1917). King Alcohol Dethroned, p. 21.
2. Fernald (1890). The Economics of Prohibition, p. 18.
2b. Asbury (1950). The Great Illusion, p. 112.
3. Gullen, ed. (1970). Billy Sunday Speaks, pp. 53. Similar references appear in Standard Temperance Tracts (c. 1885) pp 5-8 and Fernald (1890); these include clinical descriptions of what is now known as Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and Effect.
4. Streissguth, et al (Aug 1996).
5. Trebach/Inciardi (1993) Legalize It?, p. 117, describes how the number of crack babies born annually in the mid-80s, probably 8,000, was exaggerated to 375,000 in press reports and government documents (an exaggeration that Reuter (1995, p. 355) quotes from a government document); Greider (1995) explains that, however deplorable maternal crack use may be, the effects upon the child are nowhere near as harmful as the early sensational reports indicated.
6. Roth (1994), Psychoactive Substances and Violence, p. 1. Roth shatters other widely believed falsehoods about the connection between drugs and violence, as follows. "After large doses of amphetamines, cocaine, LSD, and PCP, certain individuals may experience violent outbursts, probably because of preexisting psychosis. . . . Alcohol drinking and violence are linked through pharmacological effects on behavior. . . . Illegal drugs and violence are linked primarily through drug marketing. . . . Marijuana and opiates temporarily inhibit violent behavior ... . There is no evidence to support the claim that snorting or injecting cocaine stimulates violent behavior. ... Anecdotal reports notwithstanding, no research evidence supports the notion that becoming high on hallucinogens, amphetamines, or PCP stimulates violent behavior in any systematic manner. The anecdotes usually describe chronic users with histories of psychosis or antisocial behavior, which may or may not be related to their chronic use of drugs." pp. 1, 4.
7. Grinspoon & Bakalar (1993) show marijuana's negligible toxicity compared with alcohol in Marijuana: The Forbidden Medicine, p. 138. Roth (1994, see note 6) and Gilligan (1996, pp. 187, 188) assert that the pharmacological effects of criminalized drugs do not cause violence. Goldstein (in Inciardi & McElrath, ed. 1995) describes three aspects of the relationship between psychoactive drugs and violence -- psychopharmacological effects, economic effects, and systemic effects -- and notes that U.S. crime statistics do not distinguish between them. Rodgers (1994) clarifies that alcohol does not carry a lower risk of addiction than the criminalized pleasure drugs. Furthermore, the widely held belief that controlled use is commonly merely a brief prelude to nearly inevitable addiction to the criminalized drug lacks research support (Harding and Zinberg, in DuToit ed., 1977).
8. de Koninck (1953). Abstention and Sobriety, p. 19. "Sobriety, then, bears specially on the matter of liquor; not any kind of liquor whatever, but that which is capable, by virtue of its fumes, to turn the drinker's head, such as wine or anything else that has the power to inebriate." (St. Thomas Aquinas)
9. McKenna (1992). Food of the Gods, pp. 212, 213 including a quote from Mortimer (1974). Also, significantly, bhang, a water-borne form of marijuana, is used in India (see Carstairs' chapter in Solomon ed. (1966)); the hallucinogenic potion ayahuasca is used for sacred purposes in South America (Schultes and Hofmann, 1992, pp. 120-127); and laudanum, an opium liquor or tincture, was used in 19th century America (McKenna, 1992, pp.158, 159). 
10. Pieper, Josef (1966). The Four Cardinal Virtues.
11. Lewis (1943), p. 75.
12. In Bischke (1994), see section called "Deceptive Drug Talk"; see Roger C. Smith's article in David Smith (1970), especially his references to Earle Albert Towell's notoriously dishonest book On the Trail of Marijuana, The Weed of Madness; see Lusane (1991) chapters 1 and 2, Solomon (May/June 1997), and Nadelmann (1997). Morgan and Kagan (in Inciardi & McElrath ed.,1995) document the florid media exaggerations and distortions about PCP, but nevertheless characterize PCP as "probably the most dangerous drug, other than alcohol, that has been widely utilized by the recreational drug culture." Cracked Coverage: Television News, The Anti-Cocaine Crusade, and the Reagan Legacy (Reeves and Campbell, Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 1994) documents the media's sensational and distorted coverage of crack cocaine. The classic anti-drug propaganda article, Marijuana: Assassin of Youth, by Harry J. Anslinger and Courtney Ryley Cooper appears in Inciardi & McElrath (1995). 
12b. Asbury (1950), pp. 42-44. 
13. Gilligan (1996), pp. 187, 188.
14. Duke & Gross (1994), chapter 6 "The Crime Caused By Prohibition."
15. Gazzaniga (1994).
16. Duke & Gross (1994), pp. 178-180; The Drug Policy Letter (Spring, 1994), pp. 27-29; Reuter (in Inciardi and McElrath, 1995); Schlosser (1994); Schlosser (1997). 
17. Dudley (1997), Conklin (1997), Press (1997), and Scott (1997).
18. Lusane (1991) and Szasz (1974) document the racist history of drug prohibition. Mauer & Huling (1995) document the disproportionate enforcement upon and punishment of Blacks and Hispanics. Gordon (1994) describes how drug prohibition is used to control the poor and how it visits oppression upon them.
19. The federal drug control budget (adjusted for inflation) rose from about $500 million in 1970 to about $13 billion in 1992 (Sharpe et al, 1996), p. 264. If we include drug-control expenditures by states, the military, and the Coast Guard, the amount could easily be tripled.
20. Trebach (1993), p. 34, asserts that 80 years of prohibition has not reduced drug use below its pre-prohibition levels. According to Califano (1996), the Drug War has succeeded in reducing the number of casual or controlled users, which, interestingly, means it has reduced the number of temperate users -- an achievement which the church fathers would have seen as pointless or worse than pointless.
21. Roth (1994) declares that "Illegal drugs and violence are linked primarily through drug marketing" (p.1). Duke & Gross (1993), in ch. 6, describe the violence and crime caused by drug prohibition. Benson & Rasmussen (1996) assert that escalations of abstinence enforcement tend to degrade the public safety of communities. 
22. Hyde (1995) and chapter 2 of Bovard (1995), Seizure Fever: The War on Property Rights. Bovard's book addresses drug-related civil rights issues beyond property confiscation.
23. Mauer & Huling (1995), Reno (1994), and DoJ Report: Two Thirds of Non-Violent Offenders Serving Mandatory Minimum Sentences (Drug Policy Letter, Spring 1994).
24. Drucker & Lurie (March 1997) and U.S. Centers for Disease Control (1993).
24b. de Koninck (1953). p. 63.
24c. Gaustad, Edwin S., ed., Permanent Temperance Documents of the American Temperance Society (1972). p. 15.
24d. According to a 1995 World Health Organization report, "there are good reasons for saying that [cannabis] would be unlikely to seriously [compare to] the public health risks of alcohol and tobacco even if as many people used cannabis as now drink alcohol or smoke tobacco."
Source: Hall, W., Room, R. & Bondy, S. (1995, August 28). WHO project on health implications of cannabis use: a comparative appraisal of the health and psychological consequences of alcohol, cannabis, nicotine and opiate use. Brussels, Belgium: WHO.
25. The figure of 10,000 is an interpolation between two figures: Duke & Gross (1994) attribute 5830 deaths annually to drugs (p. 77); Reuter (in Inciardi and McElrath, ed. 1995) attributes 20,000 deaths to criminalized drugs (p. 355). Both confirm the alcohol and tobacco fatality figure I have cited (Duke & Gross, p. 30; Reuter, p. 355). Duke & Gross show the per capita mortality rate (in deaths per 100,000 users) to be much lower than for alcohol and tobacco. Duke & Gross also note that a large percentage of deaths officially attributed to drugs are really attributed to drug prohibition, quoting James Ostrowski: "Thus, for every death caused by the intrinsic effects of cocaine, heroin kills 20, alcohol kills 37 and tobacco kills 132."
25b. de Koninck (1953). p. 63, 64. "A Catholic must admit that the moderate use of inebriating drinks is, absolutely speaking, good, even though a great many people were incapable of using them so. Moreover, neither St. Thomas nor St. Alphonsius de Liguori -- whose authority in such matters is so great that it would be temarious to disregard it -- have ever proposed total abstention as an ideal solution for the great numbers of men. ... However felicitous the results we might expect from [total abstention] in a given case, we must never stoop to teach that good is evil. Indeed, to teach deliberately that the use of inebriating drinks is bad in itself would be worse than the very evil such tactics were meant to uproot. ... [There is] room in the Church both for those who are called to follow the practice of St. John the Baptist and for those who would fashion their conduct after the example of sobriety given by Jesus." Wasson (1914), a Protestant minister (Episcopal), reaches the same conclusion (p. 294).
26. There is a long history of non-problematic use of criminalized pleasure drugs abroad (Rubin in NIDA edition, 1978) and in the United States before drug prohibition (Duke and Gross (1994) and McKenna (1992)). Criminalized drugs also have numerous beneficial uses (in some cases from time immemoriam) in religion/initiation (Schultes and Hoffman (1992), Clark (1969), Wasson (1974), and Stewart (1987)), spirituality and inner growth (Grof (1988), von Eckartsberg (1980), and Masters & Houston (1966)), psychotherapy and the treatment of addictions (Neill (in Inciardi & McElrath ed., 1995), Grof (1980), Rodgers (1994), Bufe (1991), and Hoffer & Osmond (1968)), and for commercial/agricultural purposes (Herer, 1991). In fact, Bufe (1991) describes the turning point experience of Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson and how a hallucinogenic potion was centrally involved.
27. Dunn, ed. (c. 1900), pp. 34 & 75, and Wasson (1914) p. 238. Similar florid derision of alcohol and things related is found throughout the Temperance-era literature.
28. "Veritas doctrinae dimittenda non est propter scandalum." From de Koninck (1953), p. 51. 
28b. Gen. 1:31.
28c. deKoninck (1953), p. 14, notes four heresies that were condemned on this issue: those of the Encratites, the Ebionites, and the Aquarians ("Aquarians" were so named because they held that one should drink only water). All are ideological relatives of the Manichaean heresy.
29. Wasson (1914), pp. 150, 151.
30. Wasson (1914), p. 172.
31. Weil & Rosen (1993), pp. 31, 32.
32. Wasson (1914), p. 165.
33. Bouwsma (1988), p. 136.
34. Pelikan (1967), p. 156.
35. de Koninck (1953), p. 56.
36. Proverbs 20:1.
37. Palmer (1941). Although this book was published after Prohibition, the argument it addresses, about the biblical endorsement of abstinence, appeared frequently in Temperance-era writings.
38. Regarding modern analysis of the abstinence-versus-moderation question, see Bustanoby (1987), p. 86. Bustanoby served as a Conservative Baptist minister and later as a marriage and family therapist. Wasson (1914) refutes the 'grape juice' theory (bad yayin versus good tirosh) in ch. 1 and especially on p. 41, drawing general conclusions based on the Bible and the Christian tradition on p. 294. Beyond the statement by Lewis (1943, p. 75) that abstinence is not truly a part of the Christian tradition, Krout (1925, p. 297) and Wasson (1914, p. 186) both assert that the notion of teetotalism coalesced among American Protestant Christians through Puritan influence around the beginning of the 19th century. Krout considered it a uniquely American development 
(p. 298). In any case, the abstinence ideal represented a discontinuity in the Christian tradition. Nevertheless, this ethic obviously persists among some Christians into the present.
39. Wright (1957), pp. 242, 243, and Sasson ed. (1995) p. 638.
40. Curran, ed. (1905), p. 35. 
41. Wasson (1914), p. 236.
41b. Kerr Organized for Prohibition (1985). p. 74. 
42. Wasson (1914), p. 237.
43. Wasson (1914), p. 239. 


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