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By Courtney Cavaliere and Mark Blumenthal
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled on February 21 that a small religious sect may continue to import and utilize an hallucinogenic tea central to its ritual ceremonies.1 The court’s decision rejected the federal government’s efforts to completely ban the tea as an illegal substance. The tea, known as ayahuasca or hoasca (the term preferred by the religious sect), is a decoction prepared from a combination of psychoactive plants native to the Amazon. The beverage is used in bi-monthly rituals of the religious sect, known as O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao Do Vegetal (UDV), as a way for participants to connect with the divine.2 The UDV originated in Brazil in the late 1950’s and its use of hoasca tea as a ritual sacrament has been legally permitted there since the mid 1980s. The sect officially incorporated as a church in the state of New Mexico in the early 1990’s.
The ruling has been hailed as one of the most significant applications of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) of 1993. Under this act, the government had to prove that there was a compelling reason for criminalizing the religious use of ayahuasca tea by the UDV sect, that the tea posed actual harm to those who would consume it, and that the ban was the least restrictive means for meeting government interests.3 The Supreme Court, under the leadership of recently appointed Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., found that the government failed to provide such proof.
“I see this decision as being so important not only for the UDV but for what it represents at this time in the country,” said Jeffrey Bronfman, president of the United States chapter of UDV (e-mail to M. Blumenthal, Feb. 28, 2006). “At its core it is a profound affirmation of the role plants have in support of our physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. The Supreme Court, as I see it, affirmed not only the fundamental principles of religious liberty that our country’s democracy was based upon, but also strongly reminded the government that there are clear limits to its authority in interfering with the most personal, central, and sacred dimensions of its citizens’ lives.”
Ayahuasca is a shamanic plant potion derived from the jungle vine Banisteriopsis caapi ([Spruce ex Griseb] CV Morton, Malpighiaceae), aka caapi and yajé or yagé, and other plants.4 Two plants typically used in the Amazon as admixtures to ayahuasca are either Psychotria viridis (Ruiz & Pav, Rubiaceae) or Diplopterys cabrerana (Cuatr.) Gates, Malpighiaceae), depending on the geographical locale and plant availability.* The UDV’s hoasca beverage consists of only B. caapi and P. viridis. Various shamans in Amazonia utilize various other psychoactive plants, in addition to B. caapi and these plants mentioned just above, in the mixtures that go by the name ayahuasca. These additional plants include angel trumpet leaf (Brugmansia spp. Pers., Solanaceae) known locally in Peru as toé), tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L., Solanaceae), and others.
The term ayahuasca in the native Quechua language means “vine of the soul” - a reference to the deeply mystical/spiritual experience induced by the ritual use of the tea made from the bark of the vine, in combination with the hallucinogen-containing admixture plants.
The pharmacological activity of ayahuasca is derived from a synergistic interaction of active ingredients in the ayahuasca mixture. Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a hallucinogenic alkaloid regulated under the U.S. Controlled Substances Act as a Schedule I Substance,1 is found in the leaves of the admixture plants (P. viridis or D. cabrerana). DMT is a potent, short-acting hallucinogen that is chemically related to psilocybin, the active ingredient of “magic mushrooms” (e.g., Psilocybe cubensis (Earle) Sing, Strophariaceae), and to the neurotransmitter serotonin. DMT is inactive, however, if it is ingested orally, due to its enzymatic degradation in the liver and gut by an enzyme, monoamine oxidase (MAO). It can be protected from peripheral degradation and enabled to cross the blood-brain barrier in an active form by simultaneous ingestion of MAO inhibitors. A unique aspect of ayahuasca is that its pharmacological activity depends on this synergistic activity: beta-carboline alkaloids in the “vine” B. caapi are potent MAO inhibitors and thus when prepared in combination with the DMT-containing leaves of one of the two admixture plants, the result is an orally active preparation. Under these circumstances, the effects of DMT are slower to manifest and usually last longer than when it is administered in some other manner (e.g., by injection, as a snuff in the case of other plant-based preparations, or is smoked). (For more on the chemistry and psychopharmacology of ayahuasca, see the recent review by McKenna 2004).5
Evidence suggests a long history of use of ayahuasca in various South American cultures.4 According to the botanical text The Healing Forest, by the late Harvard ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes, PhD, and chemist Robert F. Raffauf, PhD, the drink has been employed widely in Amazonian Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil, and to a limited extent along the uppermost tributaries of the Rio Orinoco of Colombia and probably adjacent Venezuela.6 In many of these cultures, ayahuasca in considered a medicine, since many traditional healers or shamans diagnose, cure, or treat illnesses and conditions while the healer and often the patient are under its influence. They believe ayahuasca gives them their healing power through communion with the spirit world. Dr. Schultes and Dr. Raffauf’s photographic essay Vine of the Soul details and illustrates the preparations and uses of B. caapi and other psychoactive plant-based preparations by Amazonian healers and peoples.7 Members of the Brazil-based religious sect UDV, meanwhile, reportedly use hoasca during twice-monthly rituals.2
The 130 members of the U.S. sect of the UDV sued the government under the RFRA in 1999 after DEA agents seized a shipment of the tea stored at the Church’s New Mexico offices and threatened the group with prosecution. The case was presented to the Supreme Court after the government appealed rulings in favor of the UDV made by both the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico and the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.
The Supreme Court justices sided against the administration’s argument that ayahuasca should be banned to ensure the absolute authority of the Controlled Substances Act.3 Chief Justice Roberts claimed that the administration could not dismiss the possibility of exceptions to such laws, especially with regards to issues of religious freedom. Further, he pointed out that Native Americans’ permitted access to peyote (Lophophora williamsii (Salm-Dyck) J. Coulter, Cactaceae), a psychoactive cactus used in traditional ceremonies, constitutes just such an exception to the federal controlled substances act.
“If such use [of peyote] is permitted in the face of the general congressional findings for hundreds of thousands of Native Americans practicing their faith, those same findings alone cannot preclude consideration of a similar exception for the 130 or so American members of the UDV who want to practice theirs,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the court’s formal decision.1 He further wrote, “While there may be instances where a need for uniformity precludes the recognition of exceptions to generally applicable laws under RFRA, it would be surprising to find that this was such a case, given the longstanding peyote exemption and the fact that the very reason Congress enacted RFRA was to respond to a decision denying a claimed right to sacramental use of a controlled substance.”
Other factors that influenced the court’s decision included a failure on the part of the government to show a compelling need for blocking the UDV’s use of ayahuasca tea on the basis of health risks.3 The government further did not address how an exemption of ayahuasca for UDV’s religious purposes might adversely affect the country’s international relations (as the Government had incorrectly argued that the importation of ayahuasca was allegedly prohibited under the United Nations Convention on Psychotropic Substances).
The government may still decide to take its case to trial, as the recent Supreme Court decision was based only on a preliminary injunction.2 However, according to an article in The New York Times, the court’s rejection of the government’s arguments was so conclusive that it seems unlikely that a different decision would be reached through a trial.
* In Ecuador and the Putumayo regions of Colombia and Peru, the admixture used most commonly is D. cabrerana; in the rest of the Amazon basin, and around Iquitos and south of there, P. viridis is most often used. This is changing now as people have brought D. cabrerana to the area from the north and a number of curanderos around Iquitos are starting to use it in preference to P. viridis. But they are almost never mixed together in the same ayahuasca mixture. [McKenna DJ. Personal communication (e-mail) to M. Blumenthal, Apr 17, 2006.]
References
1. Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente Unio do Vegetal, No. 04-1084. The USSC+ Database of U.S. Supreme Court Opinions Web site. Available at: http://www.usscplus.com/current/cases/ASCII/9960030.txt. Accessed: April 13, 2006.
2. Greenhouse L. Court in transition: Supreme Court roundup; sect allowed to import its hallucinogenic tea. New York Times. February 22, 2006. A14.
3. UDV wins Supreme Court decision on preliminary injunction allowing the use of their ayahuasca/hoasca tea. The Vaults of Erowid Web site. Available at: http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/ayahuasca/ayahuasca_law22.shtml. Accessed April 7, 2006.
4. What is ayahuasca? Ayahuasca.com Web site. Available at: http://www.ayahuasca.com/drupal/book/view/25. Accessed April11, 2006.
5. McKenna, DJ. Clinical investigations of the therapeutic potential of Ayahuasca: rationale and regulatory challenges. Pharmacol Ther 2004;102:111-129.
6. Schultes RE, Raffauf R. The Healing Forest. Portland, OR: Dioscorides Press; 1990.
7. Schultes RE, Raffauf R. Vine of the Soul. Santa Fe, NM: Synergetic Press; 1992.
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