by Walter Wink

About the author: Walter Wink is a biblical professor at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City.

The Quaker commitment to nonviolence has direct implications for the United States’ failed drug war. It is a spiritual law that we become what we hate. Jesus articulated this law in the Sermon on the Mount when he admonished, “Do not react violently to the one who is evil” (Scholars’ Version). The sense is clear: do not resist evil by violent means; do not let evil set the terms of your response. Applied to the drug issue, this means, “Do not resist drugs by violent methods.”

When we oppose evil with the same weapons that evil employs, we commit the same atrocities, violate the same civil liberties, and break the same laws as...