“Minister Of Marijuana” Says It’s His Religion To Use Pot - News Story - WFTV Orlando
PALM BAY, Fla. — A self-proclaimed “minister of marijuana” says pot is his religion and he has every right to use it. Cops disagree and busted him while pulling 100 plants out of his house.

Steven Swalick doesn’t use terms like “pot” or even “marijuana.” Those terms appeared to upset him during a jailhouse interview. He admitted to using cannabis and even growing it but says it was for his religion. And he wanted only to be addressed as the “Reverend.”

The 56-year-old Swalick claims he has practiced a religious belief that requires the use of cannabis since he was 15-years-old. He claims to be an ordained minister. He calls his home a sanctuary of sorts for a religion called the “Hawaiian Cannabis Ministries.”

The Palm Bay police department’s SWAT team raided Swallick’s home, Wednesday afternoon, seizing 107 plants, along with all sorts of equipment used to grow and harvest them. Police say it would be worth $100,000 on the streets.

Swalick said it wasn’t being sold, but rather grown for religious ceremonies.

Steven Swalick - Florida cannabis minister

When the word “marijuana” was used, he became upset.

“We do not use that word,” he said. “Please forgive me and I’ll apologize for you. The word is cannabis. It’s the holy sacrament recognized by the Bible.”

Swalick now faces felony drug charges, which he believes will eventually be cleared under constitutional religious protections.

“I can not be convicted by man. I answer to the Lord,” he said.

Bond was set at $20,000.

Gee, doesn’t the very first page of the Christian Bible say, “And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.”  There are many references to cannabis — or “kaneh bosm” in the original Hebrew — as the main ingredient in the anointing oil used by Jesus Christ.

I’m not a religious person myself (I think you don’t need God’s permission to smoke herb, I believe it is a secular Constitutional privacy issue), but I’m a huge supporter of First Amendment rights to practice the religion of your choosing.

Swalick notes the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, signed into law by President Clinton in 1993.  It has been used to protect the rights of sincere religious practitioners to use ayahusca tea and peyote, both strong hallucinogens that are considered illegal drugs.

That same Act that should protect religious use of cannabis, yet the courts will not let such a case go to trial and set that precedent.  Eddy Lepp was set free after feds raided his gardens and confiscated over 32,000 plants.  They were very intent on locking him up and throwing away the key.  But once he raised a defense using the RFRA, they suddenly backed down and dropped the charges based on technicalities with the search warrant.

Men convicted in Saskatchewan’s biggest ever marijuana grow op receive sentences
REGINA — Convicted in Saskatchewan’s largest marijuana grow-op bust, three men headed off to prison Monday chanting songs and professing their innocence — despite a judge rejecting their claims that the Creator made them do it.

“It’s an injustice. This should never have happened,” Lawrence Hubert Agecoutay said as he left Regina’s Court of Queen’s Bench to serve a six-year sentence. The 52-year-old Regina man, who conceived of and managed the operation, has already filed an appeal.

Chester Fernand Girard — the Ontario gardener who provided know-how, seeds and seed money to grow the 6,000 plants — was equally defiant. “It’s industrial hemp. It’s the only thing that can save the planet,” the 59-year-old shouted. With credit for the equivalent of six months of pre-trial custody, his sentence was reduced to 5 1/2 years

Robert Stanley Agecoutay, Lawrence’s 49-year-old brother and follower, was sentenced to 3 1/2 years after also receiving six months’ credit for pre-trial custody.

In February, a jury convicted the trio of unlawfully producing marijuana and possession of the drug for the purpose of trafficking. Three other men were acquitted.

[Justice Frank] Gerein soundly rejected Lawrence’s testimony that they were growing the plants on sovereign First Nations land (immune from Canada’s drug laws), at the request of the Creator, to make medicine for their people.

“When I weigh everything, I have absolutely no doubt that the accused were engaged in the production of a very large amount of marijuana for the express purpose of obtaining a large sum of money,” the judge said in his 28-page decision. All three have previous convictions for drug crimes.

Girard’s lawyer Drew Hitchcock hopes the case sparks some thought on “reasonable drug policy.

“The judge and the lawyers have to work with the law that Parliament gives, but I don’t see how arresting guys who are sitting on the ground praying to the Creator with a SWAT team (making arrests) is really a sane drug policy.”

Lawrence, the only one among the three to testify, always carries a multi-coloured sacred bundle holding ceremonial pipes into the prisoner’s dock. He identifies himself as Chief Ka-Nee-Ka-Neet, a hereditary, ancestral chief of the Anishinabe Nation of Turtle Island, encompassing all of North America. The elected chief of the Pasqua First Nation, Elaine Chicoose, has denounced the grow-op activities.

After the sentencing, Lawrence passed his eldest son the sacred bundle.

The Agecoutays’ use of culture and religion in their defence has drawn criticism from Pasqua’s chief and council, some elders, and the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations.

Canadian and American governments say they recognize the sovereignty of the Native American tribes, but that sovereignty flies out the window when it comes to hemp.  Lakota Sioux in the northern plains have been thwarted by the DEA when they try to grow hemp.  Several First Nations people have used cannabis in a culturally significant way or for religious purposes.  The Indians were growing hemp on this continent long before the first Europeans ever set foot here.

If a tribe can have a casino in a state with no gambling, why can’t a tribe have a marijuana farm?

The Sentinel Online : News : Local
Of his arrest with a quarter-pound of marijuana in 1984, Robert George Henry said, “I pleaded guilty because it was the easy way out.”

But when he was stopped in Cumberland County on Oct. 10, 2007, the 48-year-old Franklin County resident decided not to take that route. Instead, he appeared before Cumberland County President Judge Edgar Bayley Wednesday, testifying that smoking marijuana was part of his religion.

His attempt to have the charges against him dismissed did not succeed.

“I come to the belief that me smoking cannabis helps me connect with my Lord and what he wants me to do with my life,” Henry said. He starts every day with pot and prayer, he said.

Henry said he learned about The Hawaii Cannabis Ministry, which claims the sacramental use of cannabis as a cornerstone of its religion, in December 2007 and became a member on Jan. 14, 2008.

On Jan. 15, he said, he was ordained as a minister of the Universal Life Church of Modesto, Calif., which he said gives him “the ability to start my own church.”

Part of his religion, he said, involved growing his own marijuana organically. He had just picked up the last of his own marijuana and smoked a pipe before police stopped him in October, he said, but the arrest put an end to all that.

But Henry’s attorney, George N. Marros, said he had expected the decision.

“No common pleas court judge would rule on such a serious issue like this,” Marros said. At Henry’s pre-trial conference on May 6, he said, he plans to ask for a bench trial on the case, then take it to the Superior Court.

“That’s what the Superior Court is there for,” he said.

There are many people out there who are sincerely using cannabis for spiritual purposes, as humans have done since the beginnings of civilization.  The government tries to pigeonhole sacramental cannabis users as being “insincere” and decisions about religious use of drugs are often biased and contradictory.  Members of certain indigenous tribes may use certain hallucinogens under 1st Amendment religious protections, but your everyday American who meditates or prays with marijuana isn’t afforded the same protection.

A new educational and organizing DVD has just been made available for drug policy reformers and the general public to employ, free of cost. Clergy Speak Out Against The War On Drugs is a well-done ‘joint’ production of Common Sense Drug Policy and Interfaith Drug Policy Initiative.

For more than three decades, drug policy reformers and social observers have rightly commented on the need to work cooperatively with the big three Ps to expedite political reforms in drug policy: Police, Physicians and ‘Preachers’

As the drug policy reform movement matures and become increasingly sophisticated, two of the big three Ps, police and physicians, have largely been addressed in recent years, but reaching out to the religious community has been a challenge historically for reformers.

For more information, see the full post by NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre on the NORML Blog.

JERUSALEM (AFP) - High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week.

Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy.

“The Bible says people see sounds, and that is a classic phenomenon,” he said citing the example of religious ceremonies in the Amazon in which drugs are used that induce people to “see music.”

He mentioned his own experience when he used ayahuasca, a powerful psychotropic plant, during a religious ceremony in Brazil’s Amazon forest in 1991. “I experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations,” Shanon said.

He said the psychedelic effects of ayahuasca were comparable to those produced by concoctions based on bark of the acacia tree, that is frequently mentioned in the Bible.

There is also the long-noted idea that Jesus used cannabis tops as part of the anointing oil used in ancient ceremonies. And then, of course, there is always Genesis 1:29 for all the rest of us. If you believe in that stuff, that is… me, I just figure my body is mine and so long as I hurt no one else, what I do with it is my own business and no one else’s.