2006-02-22-Supreme Court-DMT

By Donald H. Harrison

In yesterday's decision unanimously upholding the right of Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal to sip hoasca, a tea brewed with an hallucinogenic agent, during its meditative ceremonies, the U.S. Supreme Court undoubtedly recalled a time in recent American history when a similar dispensation was sought—and granted—for members of other minority "sects" desiring to use intoxicating agents in their rituals.

Even as in our time a ban on using certain drugs has been decreed for all the inhabitants of the United States, so too, back in the 1920s during "Prohibition," did the authorities insist that the populace be restrained from drinking alcoholic beverages. In both eras, of course, the authorities said they wanted nothing more than to protect the health and welfare of the people.

The problem was—and is—that sometimes the religious practices of certain "sects" have incorporated the use of banned substances into their ceremonies. In the current era, the DEA sought to end the use of the hallucinogen DMT in a four-hour tea ceremony practiced twice a month by members of the "The Union of The Plants" as the Brazilian-based group is known in English. In the era of the Prohibition, the FBI similarly wanted to prevent people from using intoxicating agents.

Were it not for exemptions built into the laws of Prohibition, at least two religious "sects" may have felt forced to violate the law of the land not just twice a month, but at least weekly.

The older of these two "sects" imbibed an intoxicating agent every Friday night and on other holidays throughout the year, including one in which members were encouraged to imbibe so freely that they wouldn't be able to differentiate the villain from the hero in one of the stories from their tradition.

Another of these "sects" ritually drank an intoxicating substance on Sundays in a ceremony that believers characterized as symbolically imbibing holiness.

These two "sects," respectively Jews and Roman Catholics, had more political influence than the tiny O Centro Espirita Beneficient Uniao de Vegetal, but the principle to which the U.S. Supreme Court cleaved remained the same: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

What story would be complete without its irony? The president of the U.S. branch of Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal " is Jeffrey Bronfman, a cousin of the Jewish family that made its fortune building Seagram's into a major liquor brand.