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Archbishop condemns recreational drugs
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has accused Ireland’s wealthy professionals
of contributing towards the criminal underworld by using recreational
drugs.
Dr Martin’s condemnation of double standards towards drugs was made
as he became the first Catholic Archbishop of Dublin to preach in the
Anglican Christ Church Cathedral since the 16th century Reformation.
Delivering the 68th annual Citizenship Sunday sermon the Archbishop said
selling drugs was about trafficking in death.
He said: “Violence and the drug trade belong intrinsically together.
“Illicit drug consumption cannot be sanitised out of that equation.”
Archbishop Martin said it was difficult to understand how a society which
rightly abhorred any expression of double-standards in public life could
engage in double-standards about drugs.
“There are those who attempt to make germ-free the bond between
the sordid network of drug trafficking and violence and the socially accepted
use of certain drugs as recreational,” he said.
But he added this attitude towards the drug trade could never be made
politically correct.
“In the face of gangland and drug-related violence just as in the
face of the purposeless violence among young people in society as a whole
must take a stand,” he said.
“That is what citizenship is about. There is no room to be complacent
in the face of wanton disregard for life.
“Too many lives have been lost. Violence is a blind alley that in
the long term achieves only grief. Vengeance rebounds on those who practice
it.” |
