Apart from the hoopla of the Trump victory, several other important things happened on 8th November. First of all, California voted to legalise the production and sale of marijuana. California is an enormous state, and so this means that a quarter of America’s population now has access to legal marijuana. As Sir Simon Jenkins remarks in the Guardian, this really does mark a turning point in the way government confronts non-medical drug use.
It may well be that the tide in favour of “legalise, regulate and tax” is unstoppable. If this is so, and I personally hope it is so, this puts the Catholic hierarchy in an awkward position. None of them, from the Pope downwards, as far as I am aware, have supported the decriminalisation of drugs.
