Churches: The Morality of Marijuana

Smoking pot may be against the law, but it is not necessarily a sin. That seems to be the consensus among Protestant and Roman Catholic clergy who have had any dealings with the marijuana-puffing youth of the turned-on generation.

Many churchmen are reluctant to give a definite yes or no to marijuana, on the grounds that the medical evidence as to its harmfulness is incomplete. On the other hand, Dr. Joseph F. Fletcher of Massachusetts' Episcopal Theological School, the nation's leading exponent of situation ethics, argues that "the morality of pot depends...