How does UDVs situation compare with that of the Native American Church and its legal use of peyote?
The UDV legal counsel has argued that the government’s accommodation of the Native American Church and its religious use of peyote clearly demonstrates that the federal government could easily accommodate the UDV’s religious practice without undermining the nation’s drug laws. The evidence submitted to the court shows that the similarities between the UDV and the Native American Church are truly remarkable. Both are modern expressions of religious traditions using plant material as a form of sacramental communion whose origin goes back hundreds of years. The two churches, both of which are Christian in theology, were organized within 80 years of one another, in both cases predating the current controlled substances laws. The government has readily agreed that the Native American Church’s use of peyote, also a Schedule 1 controlled substance, has caused no health or drug problems in this country. But the government has never been able to convincingly explain why UDV’s use of hoasca shou
