EVERY YEAR around the 20th of April, the press is infiltrated with a surge of pot-related stories, complete with as many tongue-in-cheek headlines as editors will allow. This year’s coverage was somehow different, mostly in that it didn’t evaporate into thin air (now even I’m doing it) after the “holiday.” Rather, it seems, the coverage around marijuana picked up steam over the week of April 20 and is carrying on even now, well into the summer.

One explanation is that in the midst of a recession, America is willing to consider hitting the pipe, toking the spliff, bonging the, um, bong. Mainstream politicians like California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger are actually considering the legalization of marijuana (though it won’t happen this year). Congressmen like Barney Frank from my home state of Massachusetts and Ron Paul from Texas are also on board. Reversing the Bush administration’s policy, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that Federal law enforcement will not pursue medical marijuana users in California, where the drug is legalized for medicinal purposes.

American culture seems to have moved on a long time ago. References to marijuana use are so breezily tossed around that one might assume that the stigma related to this still illegal drug has gone the way of lava lamps. In the Christian world, weed legalization is mostly absent from the conversation, but there, the silent assumption about marijuana’s legality probably goes the other way.

But younger Christians might be a different story. This week, 21 people were arrested for marijuana possession at a Christian concert in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania. In late April, the evangelical blog Burnside Writer’s Collective quizzed its young-ish readers on a series of pot-related questions. Should marijuana be legalized? Fifty percent of responders thought so, and the next largest percentage said it should at least be decriminalized. Have you ever smoked marijuana? Fifty percent said yes, 40 said no. The 10 percent in the middle respond, in uniquely young evangelical fashion, that they have smoked once or twice. (Doesn’t that just mean “Yes?”) Finally, an overwhelming majority claim that even if weed was legal, they still wouldn’t smoke it.

Like many other Western political dilemmas, Scripture doesn’t have an entry on cannabis—not even general statements on hallucinogens. Without the comfort of “the Bible tells me so,” it seems that Christians take an array of positions on their consumption, from “it’s awesome” to “it’s illegal” to “it’s witchcraft.” With so little on the subject in our texts, Christians must consider the same questions as any public official: would the legalization of marijuana be good for our economy? Would it be bad for the youth? Are the hurt it might cause drug cartels and the lessened burden on the penal system more convincing arguments than the claims that it is a gateway drug or will drastically increase drug use?