Several empirical studies suggest that recreational marijuana is popularly perceived as an essentially harmless rite of passage that ends as young people settle into their careers and their adult intimate relationships. Is this perception accurate? To answer this question, we evaluate the morality of recreational marijuana use from a virtue perspective guided by the theological synthesis of St. Thomas Aquinas. Since the medical data reveals that recreational marijuana use is detrimental to the well-being of the user, we conclude that it is a vicious activity, an instance of the vice of intoxication, and as such would be morally illicit. Lay summary: In contrast to its medical use, the recreational use of marijuana cannot be justified for at least three reasons. First, as scientists have amply documented, it harms the organic functioning of the human body. Second, it impedes our ability to reason and in so doing does harm to us. Finally, it has lasting detrimental effects on the user and his neighbor, even when it occurs in a casual setting. Intoxication is always contrary to the integral good of the person. Thus, the use of marijuana is never warranted even for good, non-medical reasons.

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development of techniques to create pluripotent stem cells (i.e., stem cells that have the properties of embryonic stem cells), without either the creation or the destruction of human embryos. 1 The bill stands as one attempt to move our society beyond the moral impasse over the permissibility of destroying human embryos in order to harvest embryonic stem cells. It makes specific reference to four alternative approaches outlined by the President's Council of Bioethics in its 2005 report, Alternative Sources of Human Pluripotent Stem Cells, 2 but notes that it will also support "any other appropriate techniques and research." In this paper, I will make the case for the moral liceity of deriving pluripotent stem cells using one of the Council's techniques, known as altered nuclear transfer The author thanks Basil Cole, O.

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