phase_dancer
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Mar 12, 2001
- Messages
- 6,179
Bush: War on tea [drugs]
Supreme Court to address Hallucinogenic Tea case - [War on Drugs]
Sourced From Torrent spy
Supreme Court to address Hallucinogenic Tea case - [War on Drugs]
The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to consider whether a church in New Mexico should be allowed to continue using hallucinogenic tea in its religious services. The tea, which contains a drug banned under the federal Controlled Substances Act, is also protected under freedom-of-religion laws. The Bush administration contends the tea is illegal and potentially dangerous.
A lower-court ruling that allowed the Brazil-based church — O Centro Espírita Beneficiente União do Vegetal — to import and use the hoasca tea, while the case was appealed, will be reviewed. Arguments will take place in the court's next term beginning in October.
The church, which has about 140 members in the US and 8,000 worldwide, says the herbal brew is a central sacrament in its religious practice, which is a blend of Christian beliefs and traditions rooted in the Amazon basin.
The Denver-based Circuit Court of Appeals, voting 8-5 that the church had shown a "substantial likelihood of success" in winning religious exemption, rejected the government's request to temporarily ban use of the drug at the church. Lawyers for the church countered that tea use by law-abiding citizens practicing their religious beliefs does not constitute drug abuse or put worshippers' health in danger.
The government argues it has a "compelling interest" in preventing an illegal market for the drug. They also cited the 1971 U.N. Convention on Psychotropic Substances which bars importation of the drug in the tea — dimethyltryptamine — except for research. Allowing the tea use "directly impairs the effectiveness of international narcotics law-enforcement efforts, frustrates intergovernmental cooperation, and weakens the government's ability to insist that other countries adhere to their treaty obligations," the government states. So it appears that the government has finally found a use for the U.N. after all - hooray!
In 1990, the Supreme Court ruled that states have a right to criminalize the use of peyote, rejecting a challenge by Native Americans seeking a religious exemption under the First Amendment's free exercise clause. I'm rooting for the underdogs' religious rights.
Sourced From Torrent spy