American adherents of a Brazilian religious sect called O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao Do Vegetal (UDV) received an exemption from anti-drug laws so that they can use a hallucinogenic tea in religious rituals. Should religious organizations like this be exempt from the laws which the rest of us have to follow?

According to the Winter 2006 issue of the Wilson Quarterly:

In a new study of intoxication, Drunk the Night Before (Univ. of Minnesota Press), Marty Roth contends that “most religions, major or minor, institution or cult, can be said to have a drug of choice.” No doubt, too, recreational drug users would establish sects of convenience, just as LSD and marijuana habitues of the 1960s launched the Neo-American Church (its hymns included Puff, the Magic Dragon”).

When organizations are given exemptions from basic laws, of course there will be abuses; the question is whether there is any way for the government to reliably weed out the problems from the genuine exemptions? That doesn’t seem very likely because it would require the government to make decisions about what qualifies as a “real” religion and what doesn’t.

This, however, isn’t a very good idea. Even if a group is formed specifically for the purpose of being able to use a particular drug, what makes them “false”? Hallucinogens have been used by religions for millennia — as Roth argues, most religions have had some sort of drug of choice. It’s not unreasonable to think that some early religions were created specifically because of hallucinogenic experiences.

It is, therefore, difficult to insist that a new religion being formed around the “religious experiences” induced by particular drugs are somehow “false” and less worthy of exemptions than older, more established religious systems. This sort of problems appear to be unavoidable, unless of course the government decides to stop making special exemptions and privileges for religious beliefs and organizations.

 

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