"Amongst the perils that threaten youth and the entire society today, drugs are in the first place, which is more dangerous as it is less visible ...They spread like an oil stain, they slowly stretch their tentacles from the major cities to the smaller centers, from the richest and most industrialized countries to the Third World."

"One can but sadly notice that a culture of death is threatening to win over love of life...death due to violence and drugs." "All the structures of psychic life are disturbed by the impacts of these exceptional and disorganised impulses..., drug addiction, more than a body illness, is a disease of the mind."

"Using drugs is always illicit because it implies an unjustified and irrational renouncing of thinking, of will and of acting as a free person...One cannot talk about the right to take drugs nor the right to drugs, because the human being does not have the right to do himself harm nor can he nor must he abdicate his personal dignity, which is a gift of God!"

"One does not win over drugs by using drugs. Drugs are evil and one cannot make concessions to evil."

"One does not win over drugs by using drugs. Substitution drugs are not a sufficient therapy, but rather a veiled way of postponing the problem..."

When he talks about rehabilitation in therapeutic communities, the Pope says that it "is done using methods which rigorously exclude any concession to legal or illegal substitute drugs".

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