A heartfelt “Amen!” to Denver Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila’s powerful condemnation last week of the insidious spread of recreational marijuana in Colorado. In a pastoral letter issued Friday, Aquila adds much-needed momentum – and a renewed sense of urgency – to countering the threat to Colorado’s youth from legal, retail pot.

The archbishop’s message to the 550,000 Catholics in the archdiocese and well over 800,000 church members statewide has relevance, in fact, to everyone in Colorado and beyond. The letter, reported by The Gazette over the weekend, is both an alert about the growing evidence of pot’s perils to society – and a profound indictment of the drug culture in general.

“In Colorado, we are now a decade into this experiment,” Aquila writes. “As more studies come out and more deaths from fentanyl pile up, we now have an overwhelming amount of data that reinforces what we have known to be true all along: the legalization of marijuana and cultural acceptance of drug use have been disastrous to our society.”

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“Unfortunately, addiction, mental illness, and homelessness are commonly experienced together,” the archbishop’s letters states. “We cannot pretend that the legalization and growing cultural acceptance of drugs do not have disproportionate effects on the most vulnerable in our society. Not only that, but it is an assault on human dignity, taking advantage of the vulnerable for the sake of financial profit.”

Indeed, mounting research findings underscore Aquila’s deep concern.

For one thing, pot use by kids has soared since legalization. While there was a relatively recent dip in pot experimentation and use among Colorado youth amid the pandemic, from 2020 to 2021, marijuana use has been rising over the longer run. Data from the state’s annual Healthy Kids survey revealed pot use by Colorado kids actually skyrocketed between 2017 and 2020. And research by Oregon Health & Science University last year found adolescent pot use across the U.S. has increased dramatically – by about 245% – since 2000.

And then, there’s the effect pot has on its young victims; data abounds attesting to the damage it is doing to our youth’s mental health. Typical is a Columbia University study released just this past May that found teens who use pot are two to four times more prone to psychiatric disorders, depression and suicide. Colorado’s own official state webpage on pot use points out its dangers to youth – that it causes learning and memorization deficiencies “weeks after” marijuana use; that it’s especially addictive for young people; that it makes them likelier to attempt suicide.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board