Being half-italian, and possibly half-Catholic, there is no doubt that Mario is smart. Tough i can't understand why would he choose to kill the citizen of his country, that were turned into bricks, to gain money. Even for a marxist that's too gruesome.
By the way, he is wrong about a thing: drugs indeed leads people to hell if they take them, but they cannot go there before death. Only a Saint or Dante Alighieri could freely move between the Afterlife and the Earth. Altough not an example, this makes me think of Saint Francis of Paola, the Patron Saint of Southern Italy, who crossed the Stretto of Messina with his cloak, challenging both Scylla and Charybdis.