Eighth Circuit dismisses religious challenge to drug laws

JURIST – Paper Chase: Eighth Circuit dismisses religious challenge to drug laws
The US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on Monday rejected claims that federal and state drug laws violate the constitutional and statutory rights of a priest in the Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church (EZCC), which embraces the sacramental use of marijuana. The St. Louis-based court affirmed a decision by the US District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, which ruled that plaintiff Carl E. Olsen did not state a claim under the First Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) or the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA). Olsen sought a declaratory judgment that marijuana is not a controlled substance when used for religious purposes and an injunction prohibiting government officials from enforcing the US and Iowa anti-drug statutes against him. The Eighth Circuit ruled that RFRA does not apply to state or local governments and that Olsen had already unsuccessfully litigated the RFRA issue as to the federal government. Noting that “there has not been a change in controlling law” since the prior cases, the court likewise held that Olsen had already litigated his free exercise and equal protection claims, and that he was not within the class protected by RLUIPA.

Olsen previously challenged drug laws in the First Circuit and the District of Columbia Circuit, among other jurisdictions. Proponents of marijuana use for medical rather than spiritual purposes won a legal victory this July, when a California court ruled that the state’s medical marijuana program does not unconstitutionally interfere with federal drug laws.

I admire the continued religious use challenges put up by sincere followers, but you’re barking up the wrong tree.  The US courts are never going to allow cannabis use to be recognized as a religious freedom issue because too many people smoke cannabis.  In their previous decisions to allow certain adherents to use ayahuasca, the courts reasoned that there were so few followers of the religion and so few recreational users of ayahuasca that allowing them their religious belief doesn’t unduly burden the government from enforcing the law (Controlled Substances Act).

But if they rule for religious use of cannabis, they know that overnight there will be millions of suddenly devout followers with the right to smoke weed and no way to enforce the CSA.  For that matter, how would they discriminate in favor of weed; who’s to stop the Holy Church of Cocaine or the Divine Temple of Heroin from setting up shop?  A decision allowing the religious use of cannabis would be the end of any meaningful Controlled Substances Act.

Of course, I think that’s a good thing and I think that religious users do deserve the right to smoke weed… but no more so than non-religious users also deserve that right.  When religious users tell me they deserve to smoke weed without punishment, in a sense they are saying I deserve to be punished for my weed smoking because I don’t believe in mythology.

I still find it funny that one could expect to walk into a court of law and demand the right to smoke weed based on the belief in something that cannot be proven in a court of law.