Do you wanna buy some grass?

Something new happened to me today. Some dude walked up to me and offered to sell me drugs. Grass, specifically. Right out of the blue.

Now that I think about it, it's a wonder that in my almost three years in Edinburgh it hasn't already happened. (However, it only took about four months of me living here before someone approached me to ask for drugs. I must look shifty.) I've been offered drugs before, at parties for example, but in a friendly way, rather than as part of a business transaction.

The guy was obviously trying to get rid of the stuff - drug dealers don't generally approach people unsolicited - and to be honest when he came up to me at first I thought he was going to ask for some spare change. In my first year here something similar happened to my flatmate - we lived on the ground floor, and he was cooking with the window open, and some fellow leaned through and asked if he wanted any weed. Again, probably a guy in a similar situation, trying to get rid of his stock for whatever reason.

I'd like to know how many drug dealers in Edinburgh are actually addicts themselves - and also, how many homeless people in Edinburgh are addicts. As much as I hate to sound preachy, drug abuse really tears society apart. I'll admit to complete ignorance about drug culture, and part of me wishes I'd stopped and asked him how much it was, rather than just mumbling "no thank you" and walking on. But do I really want to know?

As a Baha'i, I don't partake of drugs or alcohol. "It is inadmissible that man, who hath been endowed with reason," said Baha'u'llah, "should consume that which stealeth it away." (Kitab-i-Aqdas, p62 K119.) This prohibition applies to "any substance that induceth sluggishness and torpor" (Kitab-i-Aqdas, p75 K155), and as such includes most "recreational" drugs and hallucinogens. In the time of Baha'u'llah, one of the most commonly-used drugs was opium. Abdu'l-Baha says the following about opium:

As to opium, it is foul and accursed. God protect us from the punishment He inflicteth on the user. According to the explicit Text of the Most Holy Book, it is forbidden, and its use is utterly condemned. Reason showeth that smoking opium is a kind of insanity, and experience attesteth that the user is completely cut off from the human kingdom. May God protect all against the perpetration of an act so hideous as this, an act which layeth in ruins the very foundation of what it is to be human, and which causeth the user to be dispossessed for ever and ever. For opium fasteneth on the soul, so that the user's conscience dieth, his mind is blotted away, his perceptions are eroded. It turneth the living into the dead. It quencheth the natural heat. No greater harm can be conceived than that which opium inflicteth. Fortunate are they who never even speak the name of it; then think how wretched is the user.

Strong words! (The source: Selections from the Writings of Abdu'l-Baha, §129; it is from the Tablet on Purity and as such is reprinted in other publications.) In the same text, he later says:

Experience hath shown how greatly the renouncing of smoking, of intoxicating drink, and of opium, conduceth to health and vigour, to the expansion and keenness of the mind and to bodily strength.

The Baha'i objection to drink and drugs isn't purely a spiritual issue, it's physical - it's about your health! And perhaps more importantly, the health of society. The majority of incidences of domestic abuse in Scotland were committed under the influence of alcohol, for instance.

But it isn't just the Baha'i Faith that holds this view. In Islam and Christianity (the two religions after the Baha'i Faith that I know most about), there are similarly harsh words against the use of intoxicants:

They ask thee concerning wine and gambling. Say: "In them is great sin, and some profit, for men; but the sin is greater than the profit."
Qur'án 2:219

O ye who believe! intoxicants [...] are an abomination, of Satan's handiwork: eschew such (abomination), that ye may prosper.
Qur'án 5:90

Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also
Habakkuk 2:15

And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit
Ephesians 5:18

The translations used are Yusuf Ali and the King James, respectively. The bible quotes are a little more opaque, however there is some good explanation at this Christian website.

This condemnatory attiude, however, in no way implies that Baha'is think less of or try to stop people from using drugs. Indeed, Shoghi Effendi clarifies that drug use is permitted "under the advice of a competent and conscientious physician, who may have to prescribe it for the cure of some special ailment" (Kitab-i-Aqdas, p226-7 N144). Imposing one's views on another is fundamentally opposed to the Baha'i spirit of dealing with one another in "fellowship and unity". A Baha'i who takes the stance of moral superiority over someone who has the occassional glass of wine isn't really a Baha'i at all.