As to opium, it is foul and accursed. God protect us from
the punishment He inflicteth on the user. According to the explicit Text of the
Most Holy Book, it is forbidden, and its use is utterly condemned. Reason
showeth that smoking opium is a kind of insanity, and experience attesteth that
the user is completely cut off from the human kingdom. May God protect all
against the perpetration of an act so hideous as this, an act which layeth in
ruins the very foundation of what it is to be human, and which causeth the user
to be dispossessed for ever and ever. For opium fasteneth on the soul, so that
the user’s conscience dieth, his mind is blotted away, his perceptions are
eroded. It turneth the living into the dead. It quencheth the natural heat. No
greater harm can be conceived than that which opium inflicteth. Fortunate are
they who never even speak the name of it; then think how wretched is the user.
- ‘Abdu’l-Baha (‘Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Baha’)
