http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/39807.html

Lawyer: Religious exemption for illegal drug a first

By Diana Heil The New Mexican
February 22, 2006

When the U.S. Supreme Court sided Tuesday with a New Mexico church that blends psychedelic tea with Christian beliefs, the ruling did more than protect a ritual practiced by a mere 130 people.

It is the first time any U.S. court has granted a religious exemption to the Controlled Substance Act, said attorney John Boyd of Albuquerque, who worked on the six-year case. The tea contains an illegal drug known as DMT.

“We were relieved by the outcome but not surprised,” Boyd said.

O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal, a religious society founded in 1961 in Brazil, is said to have thousands of followers in South America. The name translates as Central Beneficial Spirit United in Plants. Its American branch cropped up in Santa Fe in 1993.

Americans have sought religious exemptions from marijuana laws, Boyd said, but lower federal courts ruled it would be harmful because of risks of abuse. The sacramental use of peyote has a different history. Congress, not the courts, permits members of the Native American Church to consume the hallucinogen, which is derived from a cactus plant.

The Supreme Court has never grappled with the peyote issue, Boyd noted, but non-Indians have been fighting recently for their right to partake in Native American Church rituals in Utah.

Boyd said Tuesday’s victory reinforced fundamental human freedoms. “When you’re in the minority, it is very, very easy for the weight of the government to fall on you and for government representatives to be dismissive of people’s rights,” he said.

In 1999, U.S. Customs agents seized 30 gallons of the tea from the Santa Fe office of the group’s leader, Jeffrey Bronfman. Called hoasca, the tea is made in Brazil from two Amazonian plants and exported here.

Bronfman sued the U.S. Department of Justice for the return of the tea, arguing the confiscation interfered with freedom of religion.

O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal was protected under the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act because the government could not prove that blocking the use of the tea would prevent serious harm, Boyd said. “There was no evidence that anyone was being harmed by this group’s practice,” he said.

For years, people have gathered near Bronfman’s Arroyo Hondo home to drink the tea twice a month in four-hour ceremonies . Bronfman, whose family founded the Seagram’s whiskey corporation, did not return calls for comment on the ruling, and Boyd said members don’t want to be interviewed .

The religious society describes itself as “discrete but not secretive” in English and Portuguese on a Web site that pictures four smiling women on hammocks. According to the site, the society participates in publichealth and environmental causes.

Albuquerque attorney Nancy Hollander, who argued the case in the Supreme Court, was out of the country Tuesday.

Contact Diana Heil at 986-3066 or

dheil@sfnewmexican .com.