Establishing Religious Freedom for Worship Using Controlled Substances

My question involves civil rights in the State of: Virginia (but could apply to others if I were to relocate)

I am seeking advice and information on both the process of establishing a new religion generally, with a physical location and regularly meeting congregation, and specifically a religion which has at its foundations worship practices involving controlled substances, specifically psilocybin. Legal precedents that I am aware of are the US branches of the Santo Daime and UDV churches, who have in the last 10 years received recognition from Federal courts of their religious freedom to responsibly use Ayahuasca (containing the controlled substance DMT) via the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. To be clear, I am not seeking to falsely represent the intentions of drug users as religious in order to bypass the law; I am seeking to establish a reputable institution that may enable sincere spiritual practitioners to practice under controlled conditions, without violating the law, and openly participate in fellowship with like-minded practitioners.

As I understand the situation, the most important thing will be to produce a clear, written body of beliefs and practices. I am a capable technical writer and have devoted myself to extensive study of both traditional native psychedelic practices and Western approaches to the safe administration of psychedelics in religious settings as well as scientific and therapeutic settings. I understand that composing such a document will be an enormous undertaking and will come with tremendous responsibility should I be successful in my efforts, and I am prepared for this. From a philosophical perspective, I feel prepared to lay out a system of beliefs, but from a legal perspective, what criteria should such a document follow? Are there publicly available documents that I could use to model my own after?

Beyond establishing the beliefs and practices of the religion, my understanding is that a religious entity is recognized by establishing itself as a non-profit/tax-exempt organization (not sure if that is at the State or Federal level?). Particularly given that the foundational worship practices of the religion will require religious exemption from the Controlled Substances Act (possibly via the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, as in the case of UDV), are there additional steps that will need to be taken in order to receive recognition and the legal right to begin practicing? Would the best approach be to assert the right of our religion to practice in this way and defend against possible (and probable) interference by government or to try to negotiate with some part of government during the process of establishing the church?

Thank you for any and all information and advice. If there is a better place to ask for this kind of information, I am also open to that information.

You want to start a new religion so you and other druggies can legally get high?

Forget it.

Not gonna happen.

Drugs and stupidity - inseparable.

adjusterjack, if you're interested, I'd be happy to share some of the philosophy behind my goals. Otherwise, I am open to serious answers from others.

Quote:

---

Quoting Rammschnev

---

adjusterjack, if you're interested, I'd be happy to share some of the philosophy behind my goals. Otherwise, I am open to serious answers from others.

---

Have you considered that this was a serious answer?

Serious answer? If you seriously wanna try this, get a lawyer now to help you. If you try to do it yourself, you're going to be hiring one down the road to fix the mess.

free9man, that is probably sound advice. I don't think I would pull the trigger on this before seeking individualized legal advice. However, you don't have any pointers whatsoever about at least vaguely what to expect?

It is difficult to provide much information here without knowing what religious beliefs you hold in which the use of these drugs is a part of the religious practice. Understand that the government will be highly skeptical of any brand new religion never heard of before in the history of man that calls for the use of controlled substances, particularly if that use is very regular and appears to be the exclusive or main focus of the religion. The reason for that should be obvious: the government will suspect that it is not a true religion but instead is simply an attempt to come up with a way for drug users to try to escape the laws that bar the possession and use of controlled substances. If that is really what is going on here then you can expect to have a very hard time getting the government to go along with it. The less that the drug use is the focus of the religion and the less frequent it occurs the more likely it is that you might succeed. In other words, a fully developed set of religious tenets of which drug use is only a small occaisonal part is more likely to be accepted than a religion in which the sole practice and focus is getting together every day or every week to do drugs. You need to convince the courts if prosecuted that your religious beliefs are genuine and sincerely held and that this is not just an attempt to get around drug laws should you be prosecuted for illegal drug activity from this.

You will also need to be careful on another front. Should you promote this religion and followers then suffer harm from the use of the drugs you may find yourself being sued for the injuries they suffer.

This is not something that you can readily work out on a message board forum like this one. You really do need to consult a lawyer in your state who practices in the regligious freedom part of the First Amendment of the U.S. constitution and the similar provision of the state constitution.

It is becoming clear that this will be quite a bear if it is ever to come to fruition, so I'm not going to be making large decisions based solely on information I receive here, but let me explain my position.

The concept of this religion does have as its main focus, at least in terms of reason for organizing, the use of a controlled substance, but it is not the aim to simply get around drug laws for anybody who's interested. The problem is that, in addition to the many users of psilocybin who simply like to take psilocybin for leisure, there are also many who are using psilocybin very deliberately for purposes of meditation and prayer, trauma recovery, self-discovery, etc. In the US, it is not possible to point to an established history and culture of religious use precisely because the establishment of such history and culture have been prohibited along with all other forms of psilocybin use. It does not seem like a complicated argument to me that this kills the possibility of creating an organized culture and philosophy at inception and that this is necessarily contradictory to the right to free exercise of religion, but I don't know whom to make the argument to or how. The best thing that I can think to do is put together an ideology that will allow for religiously sincere users coming from multiple ideological backgrounds to come together under the notion that, in spite of those differences in background, what we do within ourselves and with each other when we take the sacrament (how I long for the freedom to use that word) is important. Religious freedom is supposed to exist on the basis of sincerely held belief, and I can't see a legally acceptable way to demonstrate this except to attempt to come together and tell someone in authority, "Yes, even though we haven't had the legal right to establish and organize ourselves collectively, this is holy to us." At least as far as I can tell, the only thing that might separate us from a scam church trying to get away with drugs is to establish a very thorough philosophy and design our procedures with the same precision and attention to safety that researchers and psychiatrists have used when administering psilocybin and try to communicate with the relevant parts of government before we've started exercising freedom we haven't been specifically granted yet.

I'm pretty certain there's not a precedent for anything like this, at least not involving controlled substances, but is this not reasonable? There is Federal recognition for the use of peyote in the Native American Church because of its long history in North America, but there is no room to recognize that another group of people could sincerely arrive at similar beliefs and worship practices? I don't know. It's really important to me. I don't just want to use psilocybin. Plenty of people find ways to do that without a formal institution. I dream of fellowship with my peers in a decent building with our heads held high and without the crippling fear of arrest, but it seems I need a Supreme Court miracle.

In answer to the specific requirements for the usage of psilocybin in the context of this religion:

The reality is that there are lots of different settings and formats that are suitable contexts for the spiritual use of psilocybin, but what I imagine being both successful and manageable is small, supervised sessions on church premises involving no more than two or three participants and at least two supervising church staff who are not to ingest psilocybin while supervising. I could also see success in small groups in a retreat-like setting. The idea behind use of the sacrament is to facilitate the unusually open and receptive states of awareness produced by psilocybin for the purpose of spiritual reflection and the occasional spontaneous spiritual experience. The basis for this is a combination of recent scientific research and commonly shared personal experience (which is, after all, the basis of spiritual practice). The aims of psilocybin use parallel but are significantly distinct from practices of deep meditation and yoga found elsewhere in the world. If I had my uncompromising preference, I would not be selective of only psilocybin but incorporate a mixture of San Pedro-derived mescaline (with its other alkaloids, which typically produce a very relaxed, peaceful state) and psilocybin, but psilocybin alone is sufficient, and people are more familiar with it than some of the alternatives.

If the main thrust of the organization is the free use of a controlled substance, you can expect the full force of the Federal government to come crashing down on you.

free9man, can you imagine even an improbable but a vaguely plausible situation in which such an effort is successful, provided that the organization requires interviews and screening for membership and only allows use of the controlled substance in approved, supervised church functions? Would you still consider this 'free use?'

Timothy Leary couldn't do it and neither will you.

Note that there is no general exemption from the drug laws for RELIGIOUS purposes. The one people keep thinking about is the Native American peyote exemption. You're going to have an extreme difficulty getting a similar exemption. This is codified in the statutes specifically from the Native American Church, not some general principal that drugs are approvable for any imagined religious group.

budwad, Timothy Leary set the example in our culture of exactly what not to do. I believe I have a far greater chance than he did.

flyingron, Are you familiar with the recent developments with the Santo Daime and UDV churches? They were granted recognition by the courts without an explicit exemption in legislation. In UDV, RFRA was referred to, and I believe the precedent set by that case was used in the following Santo Daime case.

For anyone else facing a similar issue, I have been able to locate DEA guidelines for applying for an exemption to the Controlled Substances Act under RFRA in light of the precedent set by the UDV case. There is more information here

There are several legal hurdles but it is not impossible. I am involved in the Native American Church and other religious practices that use controversial (if not locally controlled) substances including cubensis. Haven't a well versed attorney is paramount to continued acceptance by the Local and federal authorities and how you go about dispensing the sacrament and/or substances makes a huge difference also. Good luck.

Rammschnev,

Where in Virginia are you? This is something that I've been researching and considering your question for the last couple of years, and am also now ready to get serious about. As a few others have noted, the case law is quite strong around this, especially where intent is sincere and demonstrable. I'm currently searching for attorneys that are familiar with this area of practice to help get established on as sure a footing as possible, and may have a connection to the attorneys who fought successfully for the Oregon Santo Daime right to practice.

I'm going into this assuming that a legal fight will eventually be inevitable, and want to stay from the strongest foundation possible.

I'm next door in Maryland. Want to connect and talk more in person? Sent you friend request