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Archbishop questions benefit of legalizing drugs in Mexico

Archbishop Jose Luis Chavez Botello of Antequera-Oaxaca questioned the benefits of legalizing the growing and consumption of marijuana, saying it would do nothing to bring peace to Mexican families, reports Catholic News Agency.

"Who is this law supposed to benefit? Society? Those who consume it? Or those who could then do business legally?" the archbishop asked in a press release.

"Behind drugs, corruption and violence is money as the supreme value," he stated, noting that experts have pointed out that such problems have led to a crisis of values.

"As long as money is the most important value and not life or the dignity of persons," the archbishop stressed, "vice and the use of force will only increase, and we will be imprisoned in our own homes, in search only of security and not respect."

He warned that experience in countries such as Holland and Sweden, where marijuana use is legal, demonstrates that it has not helped to solve the problem, but has "only made things worse."

Therefore he warned that through the legalization of marijuana, "we would be giving the message that we cannot overcome an illness that, because of its gravity and severity, has as its goal the destruction of our society."

Last October, Victor Hugo Cirigo of the left-wing Democratic Revolution Party, which also sponsored the legalization of abortion in Mexico City, put forth a bill that would legalize the use of marijuana.

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[11/14/2008]

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