Court Upholds Church Rite: Chief Justice Roberts Writes Opinion on Use of Hallucinogen.
Posted on: Wednesday, 22 February 2006, 09:00 CST
By Michael Doyle, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.
Feb. 22--WASHINGTON - Religious worship trumped law enforcement Tuesday as a unanimous Supreme Court permitted members of a small religious sect in New Mexico to continue using a powerful hallucinogenic drug.
The tentative victory for the tea-drinking, Brazil-based sect repudiates an attempted Bush administration crackdown.
It's also an endorsement of congressional protections for out-of-the-mainstream religious practices.
"Congress recognized that laws 'neutral' toward religion may burden religious exercise as surely as laws intended to interfere with religious exercise," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote.
The 8-0 decision sent the case back to a federal appeals court, which could consider more evidence. It was the first freedom-of-religion opinion written by Roberts since he joined the court last fall.
For the short term, it also means members of the O Centro Espirita Beneficente União do Vegetal can keep drinking their sacramental tea, called hoasca.
Brewed from two plants unique to the Amazon rain forest, hoasca contains a hallucinogen called DMT, for dimethyltryptamine.
Every few weeks, members of the sect established in 1961 use the tea in ceremonies that "facilitate the transformation of human consciousness" and last several hours, according to the church's Web site.
"Everyone who cares about religious freedom is going to be very, very relieved," the sect's attorney, John Boyd, said in an interview Tuesday.
"This is part of a tradition that goes back thousands of years."
Boyd is based in New Mexico, home to most of the estimated 130 U.S. members of the sect.
The church's world headquarters is in Brasilia, where church leaders proclaim their intent to "contribute to human development through the improvement of intellectual qualities and moral and spiritual virtues."
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Copyright (c) 2006, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.
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Source: The Sacramento Bee
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