Please do not start another marijuana thread. In 2021 there were at least 4 such threads. Rarely does a multiplicity of threads on the same subject bear more or better fruit.
Agreed. It's why I barely participated this time. What's frustrating is that the Catholic theology regarding the matter can easily be summarized in two sentences, and it has been summarized early in this thread and so it needn't have continued.
Theologians agree that taking a substance to the point of completely losing control of your higher faculties (to where you can no longer engage in moral reasoning) is grave sin ... without a grave justification for it (e.g. surgery, relief of extreme pain, etc.), and that lesser degrees of impairment of those faculties can be justified (i.e. not sinful) for proportionately less grave reasons. If these "incomplete" impairments (their term) are not justified for such proportionate reasons, they'd be venial sins.
Done.
If you want to add a third sentence it's that certain extrinsic considerations can render its use gravely evil, such as if I am risking my job (at a place where randoms are taken), or risking prison, or taking one of those substances that can cause instant addiction to the point where people ruin their lives over it, or even just breaking a just law without (again) proportionately serious reason.
What a waste of time. I submit it's due to a lot of Traditoinal Catholics in the US being somewhat poisoned by Puritanical attitudes, something which we saw also on some other threads. I doubt we'd be having this debate in, say, most of Europe or Latin America.