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News from around the planet about Ayahuasca

Santo Daime Followers Can Have Their Tea and Drink It Too

Published by admin

On Wednesday a federal judge in Oregon ruled that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) allows followers of the Brazil-based Santo Daime sect to consume ayahuasca, a psychedelic tea ontaining the ordinarily illegal drug dimethyltryptamine (DMT), as part of their rituals. Guided by the Supreme Court’s unanimous 2006 ruling in “a very similar case” involving Uniao do Vegetal, another Brazilian religious group that also consumes ayahuasca, U.S. District Court Judge Owen Panner concluded that RFRA “requires that plaintiffs be allowed to import and drink Daime tea for their religious ceremonies, subject to reasonable restrictions.”

Drugs and Culture: New Perspectives

Published by Bia Labate

The book Drugs and Culture: New Perspectives, the result of a symposium organized by the Interdisciplinary Group for Psychoactive Studies (NEIP, www.neip.info) and that took place at the Universidade de São Paulo in 2005, represents an important push by researchers in the areas of anthropology, sociology, political sciences, law, and history to approach the topic of “drugs” from multiple angles and who have as their common ground the staunch criticism of the prohibition of these substances.

Ayahuasca in the Supreme Court

Published by Steve Beyer

By Steve Beyer
There has been a lot of confusion about the current legal status of ayahuasca in the United States since the Supreme Court decided the União do Vegetal case two years ago. This post attempts to shed some light on the subject in the context of earlier cases involving peyote, the Native American Church, and other claims of religious exemption from the Controlled Substances Act.