On April 15, the Minnesota Catholic Conference held a Catholics at the Capitol virtual event at the encouraging involvement in the shaping of public policy, with speakers both at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul and livestreamed from other parts of the country and the United Kingdom. As part of the day’s events, Auxiliary Bishop Andrew Cozzens urged viewers — about 800 people registered — to talk with their state legislators about the dangers of H.F. 600, which would legalize and regulate recreational marijuana for general use by anyone 21 or older. While the Minnesota Senate did not pass the bill, the House did, and the bill remains active for the second half of the biennial session, set to begin Jan. 31.

Bishop Cozzens’ warnings about the legislation include concerns over psychological harms from marijuana, people driving while impaired by the drug, more rather than fewer marijuana-related arrests and increasing the drug’s accessibility among young people.

His address:

This issue, about marijuana, is one of the very important issues where the Catholic voice needs to be heard at the Capitol, because we believe that we’re introducing another vice into our society that’s going to lower public morality and really harm our people, most especially our young people. The legislators at the Capitol need to hear about the damaging effects of this potential bill.

The bill is called H.F. 600, and those who are proposing the bill argue that we need to lower arrest records, especially among minority populations, and relieve criminal records among minority populations, and in order to do that we need to legalize marijuana.

Now, we could have a very good policy discussion about that particular issue. Because that is an important issue to pay attention to. But the fact is in the states where they have legalized marijuana, arrest records among African Americans have doubled, and in general, marijuana-related arrests have tripled. And so, the policy promises that they are making don’t hold true.

We need to actually begin to think about the reality of what happens if we pass this bill. Which is not simply a bill that’s dealing with a small or narrow policy issue, but which in fact is seeking to legalize marijuana for our whole society. The key is this, if this bill passes in Minnesota, more people will be smoking marijuana, and that’s not good for Minnesotans.

I want to read you a quote from Pope Francis, who actually did address this issue in a conference at the Vatican on the problem of drugs nationally and internationally. The Holy Father said this: “Attempts, however limited, to legalize so-called recreational drugs are not only highly questionable from a legislative standpoint, but they fail to produce the desired effects.”

That is, when we legalize these drugs, it doesn’t regulate them in the way that we would hope, it actually increases their use.

It’s very interesting, because we all know the problems we have in our society with smoking and vaping, and especially how prominent that is among young people. And what drives it? Well, we know, it’s the money that comes from big tobacco companies. And we’re looking now at introducing another for-profit industry that drives smoking and vaping of marijuana, and we’re somehow pretending it’s not going to affect our young people.

That, of course, is a kind of moral blindness. For we know that whenever marijuana becomes legal in a state, it becomes more readily accessible to young people, even though the law says you have to be 21 to have it. And, there are many other negative effects. For example, in states like Colorado and Washington, almost 20% of auto accidents involve some form of marijuana use. It affects the culture negatively in general.

The final point I want to make today is that our young people are struggling. Our young people are living in a very difficult world, and the COVID-19 crisis has simply made that worse. We all know that loneliness, anxiety and depression are on the rise among our young people. And the studies show that marijuana use increases the risk of suicide and depression among young people. And so, here we are, with a real crisis on our hands with how we really do care for young people in our society, and we’re about to introduce a mind-altering drug into our society that we know is addictive and will harm them.

My brothers and sisters, we can have a good conversation about criminal justice reform and having just sentences for those who are caught possessing marijuana. But if we legalize marijuana, we’re going to be introducing a whole problem, driven by corporations, that will in fact be seeking to spread the use of this drug for profit. That’s not the way Minnesota should go. So, I hope that you speak clearly about this with your legislators when you have the chance.

Thank you, and God bless you.