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 News from Around the Americas | February 2006 
US Ruling Protects Sect's Use of Hallucinogenic Tea
 William Branigin - Washington Post
| | Ayahuasca [American Spanish, from Quechua, rope of the dead, narcotic : aya, corpse + huasca, rope] is an hallucinogenic brew made from the bark and stems of a tropical South American vine of the genus Banisteriopsis, especially B. caapi, mixed with other psychotropic plants, used especially in shamanistic rituals by certain Amazonian Indian peoples. |
The US Supreme Court decided unanimously yesterday that the government cannot prohibit a small religious sect in New Mexico from using a hallucinogenic tea as part of its rites, ruling against the Bush administration in a case that pitted religious freedom against the nation's drug control laws.
The ruling upheld findings by lower courts that the government failed to demonstrate a compelling interest in barring the Brazil-based sect, O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal, known as UDV, from using hoasca, a sacramental tea that contains a banned hallucinogen.
The opinion in the case was written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. The court's newest justice, Samuel A. Alito Jr., did not participate in the decision, because he took his seat on the bench after the case was argued.
Roberts noted in his opinion that the government conceded that UDV's use of the sacramental tea was "a sincere exercise of religion." The government nevertheless had sought to prohibit it on grounds that the Controlled Substances Act bars all use of the tea's hallucinogen, dimethyltryptamine, or DMT.
UDV sued to block enforcement of the ban, relying on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which prohibits the federal government from substantially burdening a person's free exercise of religion unless the action furthers "a compelling governmental interest" and is "the least restrictive means" of doing so.
The Bush administration argued that the religious freedom act was not violated because the ban on the sacramental tea was the least restrictive way to advance three compelling federal interests: protecting the health of UDV members, preventing diversion of the hallucinogen to recreational users and complying with the 1971 U.N. Convention on Psychotropic Substances.
In his opinion, Roberts wrote that everything the government said about the DMT in hoasca also applies to the mescaline in peyote, which Native Americans have been allowed to use in religious ceremonies for 35 years.
"If such use is permitted . . . for hundreds of thousands of Native Americans practicing their faith, it is difficult to see how those same findings alone can preclude any consideration of a similar exception for the 130 or so American members of the UDV who want to practice theirs," Roberts wrote. |
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