Presbyterian response to drug use across the decades
PHS archivist draws a throughline through time, from the repeal of Prohibition in the 1930s to opiate abuse in the 1970s
What have Presbyterians done about drugs?
At the General Assembly level, concern for drug abuse has typically been couched in terms of Presbyterian social witness surrounding health, expressing concern for the user and for those nearest the user. In some places, the Church has opposed drug use simply as part of "clean living." Concern surrounding the use of what are now federally-scheduled drugs at times was minimal compared to the Church’s attitude toward much more widely-used substances, like alcohol and tobacco. At all times, the Church has been influenced by prevailing social mores, while seeking to act on society.
The 1913 PCUSA General Assembly offered the first national Presbyterian statement on narcotics, and made special provision for its statement to be passed "to the proper authorities in Washington," urging that the U.S. "resume its stand in the front rank of the nations, regarding the traffic in opium and other hurtful drugs, and that to this end Congress ought as speedily as possible to enact an effective law to prevent interstate transportation of opium, cocaine and other similar drugs."
Presbyterian discourse on opium in the 1910s and 1920s is riddled with the sentiments of the age of imperialism. Missionary magazines told of venereal disease accompanying opium smoking in Qajar Iran, and of opium being brought into Korea through Japanese occupation — an ill-effect that might have been avoided "had Japan been wise and long-sighted enough to treat the Koreans as America treated the Cubans or England the people of the Straits Settlements," wrote one reporter in the March 1920 edition of "New Era Magazine."
The 1930 PCUSA Standing Committee on Christian Education went on record supporting "the efforts of all governments to limit the production of opium," and used a single statement to answer many resolutions, including one from the Presbytery of Seattle against the advertising of opioids.
In 1936, the Assembly passed a resolution on the pernicious effects of motion pictures’ glamorization of drug and alcohol use, saying "We deplore the fact that the great motion picture industry has seemingly joined hands with the liquor interests in frequent portrayals of drinking scenes, which tend to give young people the impression of the social approval of the use of alcoholic beverages."
The next year’s report from the Standing Committee on Social Welfare, once again reacting to the repeal of prohibition, recommended total abstinence as the "Christian ideal of conduct," and called for the "special attention of government" to manage the liquor industry. The Committee put forth a long list of vices pursued by the industry, saying "it has employed hostesses and barmaids to lure men and women to destruction" and "made accessible to minors drinks that adults cannot withstand." The Committee closed with a short passage on other drugs, commending efforts to "discourage and prohibit the use of habit-forming drugs in this and other lands."
Concern for the sobriety of Christians was expressed in different ways in mission fields. The Presbyterian mission worker D.C. Henry, writing from Gambela, Sudan in 1946, encloses a list of rules for behavior directed toward Sudanese teachers and parents: "the teacher should not drink strong drink, nor chew or smoke materials like betelnut, chat, hashish, or opium." Henry recommended teachers divert their guests when offered alcohol: "I will be glad if you have a little coffee or honey water for me!"
The PCUSA Syria-Lebanon Mission, in a passage on the conditions of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon in 1949, reported that the annual cannabis harvest in the Bekaa Valley drew children away from refugee schools. Palestinians of any age were prohibited from working in Lebanon (many professions remain legally off-limits to Palestinians today) and cannabis harvesting and the production of hashish were lucrative. At one school "only ten apprentices withstood the Hashish devil and remained in their posts" (this quote pulled from a report found in Box 16, Folder 13 of RG115).
For its part, in the 1950s and 1960s the General Assembly turned toward healing the victims of drug use, both the users themselves and their communities. The 1957 GA was the first to call for "more abundant resources for the rehabilitation of narcotic victims." In 1966 the UPCUSA issued a lengthy statement chiefly dealing with opiate abuse, calling for communities to "provide for the social and medical rehabilitation of addicts," for legislation which would "end the discriminatory treatment of persons addicted to opiate drugs," and affirmed the work of individual congregations to "initiate and sponsor" neighborhood drug treatment programs.
The 1966 statement was shaped by the work of the Office of Church and Society (OCS), and their work was informed by material collected by Dean Lewis. Lewis’s file of background research includes publications from St. Leonard’s House in Chicago, a state-approved halfway house run by the Episcopal Diocese, whose approach to men coming out of prison and addicted to drugs was "loving acceptance."
OCS staff went on retreat to talk about drugs in the winter of 1966, gathering at Philadelphia’s Krisheim Center, and coming out with draft guidance for the Assembly. Their document expresses that narcotic addiction — the group was chiefly concerned with heroin use among young people — was a "symptom of something wrong in society" rather than a personal vice or failing. The group noted the distinct criminalization of heroin users compared to the socially acceptable use of "alcohol, barbiturates, and tranquillizers" and objected to mandatory sentencing for narcotics offenses like possession.
Underpinning these recommendations is the idea that Presbyterian witness is mutual — in saving the addict, Christians save themselves. Quoting 1 John 4:20, they wrote: "This ministry of reconciliation is crucial for both us and the addict for 'if we say we love God and hate our brother, we are liars.'"
By the early 1970s, Presbyterians seemed to be able to distinguish between the deleterious effects of drugs on society and the mission to care for people as they were. In March 1970, the Nixon administration invited church leaders to a White House summit on drugs; those invitees went on to form the NCC Committee on Alcohol and Drug Problems, which produced a resource for congregations titled "Putting Together The Drug Puzzle." Following this work, the PCUS Council on Church and Society sent an action on drugs to the General Assembly, meeting in Massanetta Springs, Virginia. It emphasized that marijuana was not a narcotic, and that "excessive penalties" surrounding the substance should be removed — though the Assembly stopped short of advocating for legalization.
Press surrounding the Assembly’s action carried along old prejudices. The Presbyterian Survey wrote that "drug use is no longer just a ghetto problem ... It includes sons and daughters of middle and upper class families, drug dependent housewives in suburbia, alcoholic businessmen, experimenters, the dabblers, the social pot smokers, the pan-drug users who take drugs indiscriminately and constantly ... "
Fear that poverty’s ills would encroach on the upper classes is apparent in the Survey’s language. And even nominally sympathetic Presbyterians couldn’t help but launder false reporting to their audiences. The Survey's special edition on "Drugs and the Church" points readers to the Federal Narcotics Bureau claiming the presence of 6,000 heroin addicts in Washington D.C. alone; the D.C. Metro Police reported as many as 30,000. But epidemiological studies from the time report a ratio of 4 users per 1,000 people in the city at the peak of heroin use in 1969. That adds up to 3,000 people — an order of magnitude fewer than the police reported.
Panic about inner-city heroin use contrasted with a new sense of equanimity about marijuana use. In 1973, the United States’ Shafer Commission recommended federal leniency in policing marijuana use. Its section on religious responses to drug use in society goes so far as to acknowledge mysticism and the understanding gained from "other forms of consciousness such as the drug-induced 'high,'" adding that "The heritage of all the world’s major religions is rich with the experiences of prophets, seers, saints, and mystics ... The religious community thus has a strong interest, as well as the moral basis, for exploring altered states of consciousness." The National Council of Churches’ commentary on the Commission’s report, released in 1973, was more circumspect, calling for legalization of marijuana for private use and for a policy of "discouragement."
Though the General Assemblies of the PCUS and UPCUSA remained silent on narcotics during the peak of the Drug War in the 1980s, grassroots networks of Presbyterians remained at work on addiction. The Presbyterian Alcohol Information and Action Network (PAN) was organized at the 1978 UPCUSA General Assembly in San Diego, coordinated by Margaret Fuad of California and William B. Ailes of Idaho. The network aimed to raise awareness of alcohol abuse, sponsored actions at General Assemblies of the 1980s, and developed an educational video titled "Is There An Elephant In Your Sanctuary?"
In response to one GA resolution, PC(USA) Research Services commissioned a poll of members, which found that nearly 40% of Presbyterians reported "trouble" in their families arising from alcohol use. Recognizing that alcohol and drug abuse were interrelated, the group renamed itself the Presbyterian Network on Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse (PNAODA) in June 1985. Materials relating to PNAODA live within the Presbyterian Health Education and Welfare Association records at PHS, in box six.
PNAODA’s work led the 205th General Assembly in 1993 to call for "honest talk about the use of drugs," advocating for study and education in families, congregations, presbyteries, and synods. As in the 1970s, the Assembly once again called for increased drug treatment, the end of mandatory minimums in sentencing for some drug offenses, and the "demilitarization of US drugs wars policies in foreign countries" (Quote from the minutes of the 1993 GA, p.759-760).
Responding to the 2014 General Assembly, the PC(USA) Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP) undertook a two-year study on drugs in American life, with the aim of responding once again to the Drug War. For the better part of two years a Drug Policy Task Force met to study and discern together. The Presbyterians involved in drafting the original overture "envisioned a major campaign and on-going program based in the Compassion Peace and Justice ministries of the church and linking to other denominations." They were especially concerned with addressing how the U.S. drug market offshored violence to Mexico and Central America, from U.S. training of Mexican and Guatemalan special forces units, many of whom would go on to form the Zetas cartel, to the export of illegal guns to Mexico. The group also had a nascent awareness of the long-running opioid crisis, reading Peter Shumlin’s writing in the New York Times on the FDA relaxing rules surrounding prescription of oxycontin.
ACSWP’s statement, published as "Healing Before Punishment: Why Presbyterians Seek to End the War on Drugs," was necessarily wide-ranging. It once again encouraged governments to treat drug addiction as a public health concern. The statement called for expanded insurance coverage for behavioral therapy, for the revision of laws surrounding paraphernalia possession, and for the reform of mandatory minimum sentencing and asset forfeiture laws.
The statement was passed by the 222nd General Assembly, held in Portland, Oregon, in 2016. In addition to the familiar treatment of drug use as a matter of concern, the Assembly, saying that substances which "gladden the heart" were best used moderately, specifically recommended federal reclassification of marijuana to permit wider medical use. Commissioners had front-row experience of living in a society that had largely decriminalized marijuana over the course of 40 years: Oregon’s Finest, a prominent Portland dispensary, was directly across the street from the Assembly. ACSWP brought additional recommendations to the 223rd General Assembly (2018), which passed in the consent agenda.
After more than a century of addressing drug use, the Church’s approaches have been as varied as the effects of drug use in society at large. In light of this, it’s probably misguided to approach research around "drugs" as if dealing with a single concrete theme or idea. Consistently though, as we read, we can see Presbyterians begin from ignorance and superstition, learn and discern together, and move on with greater knowledge and compassion. Gradually, they recognize not just the stigmatized user outside the church walls, but themselves — displaced from Divine power, left wanting, doing their best.
Learn more
PC(USA) Social Witness Policy Compilation
Guide to the Advisory Council on Church and Society Records,1916-2002, RG540
Guide to the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Syria Mission Records, 1808-1967, RG115.
RT 772, Presbyterian Church in the U.S. Corporate and Social Ministries
ARCHIVES 16-1035, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy
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