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MANSFIELD — The burning question on Tuesday night’s vote is, will City Council be bowing down to the ‘Almighty Dollar’? Or will the elected officials be safeguarding children and shielding the addicted? That is the question a group of local clergy is addressing. On Sunday evening, a grassroots coalition of clergy delivered a joint statement to members of the Mansfield City Council.
“We encourage Mansfield City Council to vote “YES” to a six-month moratorium on commercial cannabis, a drug associated with addiction, crime, and impairment,” eighty-four clergy wrote in an email correspondence to Council. “Furthermore, it is our desire in the future City Council extends this moratorium indefinitely to prohibit this illicit drug.”
Having started a congregation that ministers to people in downtown Mansfield, Pastor Joe Nichols, one of the cosigners of the letter, has a vested interest in Council’s decision. He asserts, “As local stakeholders, the faith community has engaged drug addiction during the Opioid Crisis and even before, implementing drug treatment ministries, and promoting drug awareness thru marches and rallies,” Nichols said. “We believe these community efforts will be undermined if commercial cannabis is permitted in city limits. Furthermore, the momentum we achieved will be lessened.”
In the letter the clergy wrote, “The Book of Ecclesiastes says, “There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labor.” (2:24 KJV) There is no question cannabis adversely impacts work. Since users of cannabis pursue a ‘euphoric high,’ work is impaired, and productivity is reduced,” the clergy warned. “With skyrocketing THC levels in today’s cannabis, more accessibility to cannabis will bring inebriated employees, more job accidents, and more absenteeism.”
The faith leaders believe that whether the federal government reclassifies marijuana as a Schedule 1 substance or not, their opinion on the danger it brings does not change. Another clergy cosigner, Pastor Dan Zediker points out, “The Bible says ‘All things might be lawful, but they are not always beneficial.’ Part of the deception is that addiction to drugs should be culturally acceptable. We have to be sober-minded and vigilant,” he says.
“As local stakeholders, the faith community has engaged drug addiction during the Opioid Crisis and even before, implementing drug treatment ministries, and promoting drug awareness thru marches and rallies. We believe these community efforts will be undermined if commercial cannabis is permitted in city limits.”
Pastor Joe Nichols
“It should be noted, following Mansfield City Council’s formal opposition to recreational cannabis in 2015, and following City Council’s prohibition of “medical” cannabis in 2017, Mansfield/Richland County in 2020 became the seventh top metropolitan area in the nation (areas under 200,000 population) for significant economic projects per capita,” Pastor Zediker cited. “Our community became a hot spot for job growth without cannabis…..it can be done.”
Other clergy in the collaboration, Pastor James Davis and his wife Joi, lead a congregation in Mansfield and consider the city as their ministry field. Davis has twenty-five years in the social work field and has seen first hand the negative impact marijuana has had on children and their families.
“We wholeheartedly agree with the METRICH Executive Director who stated this past winter that ‘Mansfield is a community of children and families, and that a legislative body should not place revenue from the cannabis industry over the security and sanctity of the family.’ Without a doubt, more accessibility to cannabis will bring more exposure to children, damaging their brain development, jeopardizing their mental health, and lowering their academic performance,” Pastor Davis observed. “Our children deserve better than this.”
Earlier this year at a Madison Board of Township Trustees meeting, several pastors referenced an economic analysis on tax revenue Colorado marijuana brought to the state. For every tax dollar generated by marijuana sales, the study found $4.50 of mitigating social costs that were incurred. The pastors at the Trustee meeting said they believe a local commercial marijuana industry will feed the Black Market.
In the letter to Mansfield City Council, the clergy commented, “Allowing the Cannabis Industry to profit off collateral damage to our community is not acceptable. Commercial cannabis will only add to the trauma in our neighborhoods. It is no small matter that the blessing of the LORD, it maketh rich, and He addeth no sorrow with it. Furthermore, as lead clergymen from eighty-four area congregations, we ask Mansfield City Council to please vote “YES” to prohibit commercial cannabis in Mansfield, our community is counting on you.”
A number of elected officials in the area have already answered that call. Nine townships in Richland County currently prohibit commercial marijuana businesses, eight of those prohibit indefinitely. Area municipalities Ashland, Lexington, and Shelby also prohibit indefinitely. This Spring the City of Ontario passed a six-month moratorium, and the Village of Bellville just renewed their moratorium last week for another six months. Faith leaders are hoping there is more to come.
The Bottom Line:
The Bible says in James Chapter Four, “If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and does not do it, it is sin for them.”
