Electric Tuesday for December 21st 2010 presents to you “Ganja Massive” by Renard. It’s a pretty brutal, nonstopping-power-driver of a track that is mainly hyped up Drum N Bass, border-lining Ragga. When I asked Renard about his relationship with Cannabis he replied “LOL, I don’t do drugs, but I don’t have a problem with anyone doing them!”

You can find plenty more tracks like this on Renard’s page http://lapfox.bandcamp.com and main website www.renardqueenston.com

Pack another bowl or light another joint…strap yourselves in and -ENJOY THE RIDE!

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Only one of these goals keeps me out of a jail cell.

Thank you Chris Bennett for your enlightening article rebutting NORML’s articles regarding religious use of cannabis arguments in court and the case of Roger Christie.  You bring up some aspects to the history of religious use and religious use cases that deserve serious consideration.  However, we will stand by our writing because we believe you, and others so deeply and sincerely wedded to your religious use arguments, continue to miss our points: Religious use arguments are not likely to work in court and selling a card that guarantees those arguments will work is a fraud on cannabis consumers.

No reasonable person wants to see Roger Christie being held in jail without bond pending trial on these non-violent marijuana charges.  None of us want to see him imprisoned for his religious use of marijuana.  This debate is about the current state of the law regarding the religious use of marijuana in this country and the best strategy to legalize the religious use of marijuana.  It is not a debate about the legitimacy of anyone’s religious beliefs and to make it so misses the opportunity to discuss how we all best spend our time and money bringing an end to marijuana prohibition so we may all enjoy our human rights to cannabis.

NORML always has and always will support any person’s right to use marijuana for whatever reason they see fit.  God told you to toke?  Great.  Your doctor recommended you toke?  Right on.  There’s a Pink Floyd laser light show tonight?  Fantastic.  NORML doesn’t think you need the permission of a court, king, clinician, or cleric to use cannabis.

But courts and law enforcement don’t agree with NORML. The point we’re making is that if you want to exert your religious right to use cannabis, you’re likely to be praying behind bars sometime soon.  Not that you should be arrested, not that the courts should find against you, but that they likely will and you should be prepared for that.

If you have a church with ganja, person says they believe, you give them ganja, they give church money; hey, we’re fine with all that, though in my neighborhood they used to call that “dealing”.  If you’re providing it at low cost, great, you’re a discount dealer.  We defend dealers all the time, though usually their primary motive is profit, not piety.  The reason marijuana was traded for money is irrelevant to us; we think it should be legal.

So our primary criticism – one you didn’t include in any of your voluminous cut-n-pastes – is with Christie leading people to believe that there already exists now a recognized legal religious right to use cannabis, because there does not.  You may believe there should be.  We believe there should be.  But the Supreme Court doesn’t agree.

This card will be just as effective at preventing your arrest for cannabis as the THC Ministry's ID Card

Mr. Christie sells on his web site a $250 “Sanctuary Kit” and a $50 “Practitioner’s Kit”.  He explains that these kits demonstrate your religious sincerity and that is the key to defending yourself in court and proving your bona fide religious use.  He’s selling “Get Out Of Jail Free” cards.  Nowhere on the pages where these are sold (http://www.thc-ministry.org/?page_id=45, http://www.thc-ministry.org/?page_id=70, and http://www.thc-ministry.org/?page_id=81) does he offer a disclaimer that, yes, indeed, if you’re caught with cannabis, that $50 or $250 card is going to work as well as the Monopoly one and you’re likely going to jail and facing a long expensive court battle.

That’s not to say that some religious users haven’t had charges dismissed or not even filed at all.  But the refusal of police to press charges or the dismissal of cases at criminal court involving small amounts of marijuana isn’t any sort of precedent (which can only be set at the appellate level), it’s more a reflection of an officer’s use of discretion and an overburdened legal system that dismisses such cases whether they are religious use or not.  In some states and cities it is a reflection of NORML’s work to decriminalize or set lowest law enforcement priority that allows the courts and cops that discretion.

People have written to me that Mr. Christie has often given this kit for free, just as he has often given ganja for free.  Great, just like NORML lawyers sometimes help cannabis consumers for free.  But for $250 or for $50 or for $0, he is still misleading cannabis consumers into believing that his magical documents will protect the bearer from law enforcement and it just isn’t so.  Mr. Christie writes (http://www.thc-ministry.org/?page_id=12) (emphasis mine):

“Do you have a THC Ministry id card, yet? They work under ‘arrest conditions’ to help set people free. Zero arrest. Zero court. Zero jail. All good.”

“We have had a total of ZERO negative experiences with those who have used our kit. As far as we know we have a perfect track record and we want to keep it that way, for your benefit and ours.”

I know that number is not “ZERO” because I write these stories all the time, like:

• Trevor Douglass sent $50 to Roger for his card, argued his religious use, lost, was fined $135 + court costs and given 15 hours of community service… in Colorado, where decrim fought for by NORML would have made it just a $100 ticket. (http://stash.norml.org/yet-another-member-of-the-church-of-lighter-wallets-about-to-lose-a-religious-use-marijuana-case)
• Michael Lineker and his United Global Mankind Divine Maintenance and Direction church believed in the holy anointing oil, he explained to an Alaska court.  He got seven days in jail. (http://stash.norml.org/alaska-appeals-court-nixes-religion-defense-in-marijuana-case)
• Steven Swallick got his THC Ministry kit and provided his ministerial defense to a court in Brevard County, Florida.  He’s serving two years in prison now. (http://stash.norml.org/jury-takes-14-minutes-to-convict-self-proclaimed-pot-pastor)
• Dan Quaintence got five years and his wife Mary two-to-three using his Church of Cognizance as a defense in court in New Mexico.  Daniel Hardesty, using the same Church, lost his appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court on his possession misdemeanor.  (http://stash.norml.org/arizona-supreme-court-drug-laws-trump-religious-use-of-marijuana)
• Brenda Shoop told an Alabama court her religious use in the Universal Orthodox Church protected her under the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.  She served a year and a day in prison. (http://stash.norml.org/judge-dismisses-womans-religious-drug-use-argument)
• Robert George Henry became a member of THC Ministry in 2008 (four months after he was arrested) and that defense got him 9-23 months in prison in Pennsylvania. (http://stash.norml.org/man-claims-religious-use-of-cannabis-court-disagrees)

We don’t dispute that any of these adherents sincerely believed their religion.  We don’t dispute that it is honorable to fight for one’s religious rights.  And please, true believers, stop trying to convince us about 5,000 years of religious use of cannabis because we completely agree with you – we’ve even made Genesis 1:29 and “kaneh bosm” arguments in our own writing (e.g., http://stash.norml.org/minister-of-marijuana-says-its-his-religion-to-use-pot).

Our complaint is solely with leading lambs to slaughter without making them fully aware of the risks they are facing.  Dr. Martin Luther King never told the sincere believers in the sanctity of civil rights that the march on Selma was going to provide them “ZERO negative experiences”; he fully briefed them on the fire hoses, police dogs, and riot batons they’d face in the valley of the shadow of death and urged non-violent resistance.

(For those who think I’m kicking Roger while he’s down, please note the dates on the hyperlinked stories from The Stash Blog, where I made these same points long before Roger’s indictment.)

Chris Bennett then cites my advice that only legalization for all, even healthy atheists like me, will truly protect medical and religious use without undue restrictions.  He then twists that into imagining that I’m telling the movement we never should have fought for medical use laws.

The crucial distinction this suggestion misses is that nobody ever told medical users pre-1996 they wouldn’t go to jail if they bought a $50 card from a guy based on a legal theory that medical use is currently protected by the Constitution.  Instead, NORML, MPP, DPA, ASA, and others all fought to create medical use laws, many of which do provide a legitimate card that will actually protect you from arrest and jail.

In other words, activists got government to recognize medical use rights through initiative and legislative efforts to create new laws.  Mr. Christie is fighting to get government to recognize religious use rights through litigious efforts to interpret existing case law.  This path has already been much litigated and at least in the short run it is a dead end.  We even tried the litigation path to secure medical use rights in rescheduling petitions and lawsuits against the DEA.  Every legal theory attempted to force courts to recognize a cannabis right that would supersede the Controlled Substances Act has failed and the courts keep telling us to go back to Congress and change the laws.  Now we can hope for judges more willing to extend legal protection to new and alternative religions in the future, but for now those arguments will likely continue to be rejected by the courts.

NORML has the support of some of the finest lawyers in the land.  They have explained to us a procedure the courts use in these cases called the Sherbert Test, which are the four criteria to determine if an individual’s right to religious free exercise has been violated by the government. The test is as follows:

For the individual, the court must determine

(1) Whether the person has a claim involving a sincere religious belief, and

(2) Whether the government action is a substantial burden on the person’s ability to act on that belief.

If these two elements are established, then the government must prove

(3) That it is acting in furtherance of a “compelling state interest,” and

(4) That it has pursued that interest in the manner least restrictive, or least burdensome, to religion.

Unfortunately, point (3)’s “compelling state interest” is prohibiting the general public from using cannabis as laid out in the Controlled Substances Act.  The courts realize that if point (1)’s “sincere religious belief” is only “God wants me to smoke herb”, then there would suddenly be about 26 million sincere religious believers in the United States and that point (3)’s “compelling state interest” would be impossible to enforce.

This is the moment where believers bring up established precedent on use of ayahuasca and peyote by certain religions.  The differences are that a) very few people use peyote or ayahuasca non-religiously, b) the people who do use it infrequently, c) the religions that hold them sacred have traditions and ceremony and theology that don’t deal with the sacraments (i.e. their religion is more than just “let’s do hallucinogens”), d) the members of their church are easily identifiable, so e) letting the believers use hallucinogens isn’t going to substantially burden the compelling state interest of preventing hallucinogen use by non-believers.

In other words, the minute courts decide ganja churches can’t be busted for cannabis, nobody can be busted for cannabis.  Your sacrament is too popular with non-believers.

Another test used by the courts is the Lemon Test.  This test is as follows:

(1) The government’s action must have a secular legislative purpose;

(2) The government’s action must not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion;

(3) The government’s action must not result in an “excessive government entanglement” with religion.

In the case of cannabis churches, the government’s ban passes (1) in that there is a secular purpose for banning cannabis use and passes (2) because banning cannabis does not promote or inhibit religion (Rastas can believe and preach all they like about the “Tree of Life”, they just can’t grow or use it) and passes (3) because banning cannabis isn’t an “excessive entanglement” (nothing else about the religion is being banned.)

(The “Lemon Sherbert” test, on the other hand, has nothing to do with religious cannabis use, but does make for a tasty snack on a summer day.)

Next Mr. Bennett criticizes my “full disclosure” saying that my atheism “puts [Russ] completely outside of this realm,” referring to the First Amendment.  He says it “is not supposed to be about one religion’s right over another’s – it is supposed to be about the freedom of all religions,” which is a common belief among the religious that dismisses atheism from the same protections they enjoy.  In fact, the First Amendment also provides a freedom from religion and holds that sincere personal non-theistic beliefs enjoy the same protection as religious beliefs (see United States v. Seeger, 1965).

If the conscientious objectors to the Vietnam draft in Seeger need not believe in God to invoke personal beliefs against murder as reason not to be jailed for draft dodging, then Chris Bennett should support my opinion that I need not have belief in God to invoke personal beliefs for using cannabis as reason not to be jailed for it, just as I support the opinion of the religious that their use of sacrament doesn’t deserve punishment.  But once again, our opinions don’t mean squat to the cops, the courts, and the guy with the $50-$250 Get Out Of Jail Free card who’s doing time.

(By the way, I find it interesting that Mr. Bennett attacks my atheism and ignores my Mormon background.  Many members of my ancestors’ church used the same “it’s our sincere religious belief” and “First Amendment!” and “it has 5,000 years of historical tradition in multiple religions” theories to defend the practice of polygamy.  Assuming it is polygamy consisting of multiple consenting non-coerced adults, shouldn’t that be as much a religious right as the right to cannabis sacrament?)

Chris Bennett brings up the famous Guam Rasta case, without noting that it was not the First Amendment that was cited in support of the court’s opinion, it was Guam’s Organic Act, which gives Guam greater protection for religion than the US Constitution.  It should also be noted that the prosecutor in the Guam case failed to present Guam’s compelling interest in banning cannabis and that had he done so, the court may not have been able to issue such a favorable opinion.  Mr. Bennett also brings up a Rasta winning a religious use case in Italy.  Fantastic, if you think that my statement “no court in the land is going to recognize a religion’s right to use cannabis” referred to “the planet” as “the land” and not as “the states of the United States” as was clearly the context of my argument.

Then Chris Bennett expends a whole lot of ink trying to paint our explanation of the government’s opinion and the current state of court decisions as NORML’s opinion.  Our opinion, for the 150^th time it seems, is similar to Terrence McKenna’s:

If the words “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” don’t include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn’t worth the hemp it was written on.

We see cannabis use as a human right, not merely a religious right.  No government has the right to prevent you from using cannabis for whatever purpose and reason you choose, so long as you don’t harm others.  Our beliefs say that Roger, Chris, and I can all use cannabis because we want to.  Roger and Chris seem to believe that I should only get to use cannabis if I renounce my atheism, or at the very least, consider cannabis to be sacred.

What we’re trying to explain is how the courts have decided these cases and what some lawyers have told us they’d need to see in a case before trying to defend it as religious (the “black Rasta” quotes aren’t mine; they are me quoting a lawyer I know who defends many cannabis cases and who is certified to litigate all the way to the Supreme Court).  We’re trying to make the point that pursuit of the litigation strategy that defines cannabis use as protected sacrament is a fool’s errand not because it’s foolish to fight for your rights but because that particular strategy has already been tried every which way and has already failed.

Now, naturally, the people with sincere belief who are prosecuted have every right to try to make that argument stick and we really do hope our analysis is faulty and Roger sets a precedent that allows people to claim a religious use arguments (because we know a few lawyers who will then take that precedent and make it available to all users, even atheists).  But we at NORML do not need to be throwing our supporters’ donations at a strategy we believe is doomed to fail, especially when we have legislative strategies that, when they succeed, protect all the users of cannabis: medical, spiritual, and recreational.

Indeed, in our support of California’s Prop 19, we attempted to change the laws so that everyone’s right to personal use and cultivation of cannabis is recognized, regardless of religion.  We helped get the greatest level of support for legalization in a statewide initiative ever, with 46.1% of California voters agreeing with our belief in personal cannabis rights for all.  Maybe Mr. Bennett considers that another NORML “failure” since it didn’t pass, but we see the steadily increasing public opinion support for legalization (up to 46% from 12% in the early 1970s when we began) and the increasing percentages supporting statewide legalization measures (up from California’s 1972 Prop 19 which got 33.5%) to be success.

What Allen and I were trying to say to the religious use community is that your best path to recognition of religious rights is not through litigating the courts to jettison precedent and decide for a favorable First Amendment / RFRA decision, but through legislating personal marijuana use rights for all people, even atheists and heathens.  We’re not saying you’re wrong; we’re saying the courts say you’re wrong.  But as Mr. Bennett’s article and the various responses to it from religious users have proven, it is nigh impossible for true believers to separate an criticism of one religious user’s legal tactics and commercial advertising from an attack on religious use itself… especially when it’s an atheist behind the keyboard.

Mama Marjas

Long kept in the background, an increasing number of women are stepping up to take the lead in bringing the world fantastic reggae music. The righteous Mama Marjas is one example. Born in Italy — yes, Italy — La Marjas (nee Maria Germinario) writes and sings conscious reggae, dancehall, and roots music and shares her art with audiences in Italy, the UK, and now, the US. Her 2010 Love University release, B-Lady, shows the artist in fine form and singing about issues she finds important, including violence against women. Marjas also pays homage to the mighty herb in this dubtastic cut, “Ganja.” Check it out! And check out Mama Marjas on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/mamamarjas, on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mama-Marjas/113650041981149, and on iTunes.

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Somehow, "NORCL" just doesn't sound as cool.

I received a letter from a NORML member in Arizona who had an “Important Suggestion”:

I would still encourage all of you at national NORML to think about the word pot. I don’t think you need to police anybody about the words they use, simply choose not to use this word in the public realm.

I’ve actually thought about this quite a bit.  I work in radio and blogging, so word choice is an important thing to me.  I always try to use the correct word for the correct context.

While this is by no means any official NORML style guide, here are some things I’ve considered when writing and speaking:

Cannabis – this is the plant we are fighting to liberate.  When I’m writing in medical and scientific contexts, I use this word.  When I talk about using it medically or personally, I try to use this word.  If I’m on the fence about whether to use marijuana or cannabis, tie goes to the plant.  However…

Marijuana – We are the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.  How do I reconcile that?  Do I go the “NAACP route”?  Nobody would call anyone “colored people” anymore, right?  But the acronym is so recognizable you can’t change it and it does remind you of the struggles of the past.

Well, I figure this: what we are working to reform actually are marijuana laws.  The word used in statute is marijuana (sometimes marihuana) even if sometimes it is just in the title while Cannabis sativa L. is used in the actual statutory definitions.  So if the story is about criminal justice, I’ll often use the word marijuana, because that is what the person was charged with (e.g. “possession of marijuana”).  But…

Pot – I don’t like pot, but my colleague Keith Stroup smokes pot and he “likes it a lot.”  I don’t dislike it out of offense; merely out of silliness.  Why would you call cannabis “pot”?  Because it grows in a pot?  I’m sure somebody has Wikipedia’d this already, but really, I don’t care. It just sounds silly.  Let’s smoke pot.  Eh.

But here’s where the however and the but kick in.  You also have to consider getting the message out to the greatest number of eyeballs.  In the world of Google search, marijuana kicks cannabis’s butt.  Pot does too, and it will fit better in a headline or a tweet than eight-letter cannabis and nine-letter marijuana.  So for headlines in blog posts and titles of seminars and speeches, I will use the word marijuana. When it draws the reader to the story, I can overwhelm them with all the cannabis I can muster.  Also, if pot presents an opportunity for some alliteration to set a silly tone (e.g. “Pothead Percy Harvin wins NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year”), I’ll use it, but pretty sparingly.  Which brings me to…

Pothead and Stoner – Most of us want to bury these words in the same linguistic politically-correct grave as a certain six-letter word that begins with “n” (no, I won’t say “the n-word”; what are we, six?).  Pothead seems more offensive to me, just because I don’t like pot.  (So why “Pothead Percy”?  I’m a Green Bay Packers fan.  I’m human.)

But you really can’t bury these words because they do describe a portion of our culture.  I think the distinction is that I’m a pothead – I’m all about cannabis, can tell you everything about it, medically, scientifically, historically, industrially, legally, etc. – and I smoke a buckets of weed*.  Slater in Dazed & Confused is a pothead.  Stoners, on the other hand, just smoke buckets of weed.  They like being high, not necessarily fighting for the right to do so.  (And that’s not a moral judgment, either.  Really, why should they fight too hard for something they’re already doing?)  Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High is a stoner.

When I asked my audience about those two words, they seemed to think it was OK if we were saying it to each other, but it was offensive if they were saying it to us.  In that respect, perhaps pothead and stoner do resemble a certain six-letter word that begins with the letter “n”.  So I use it to call out the cannabis users among us that make the rest of us look bad in a segment I call “Stupid Stoner Stories”.  Generally, the people I address as pothead or stoner have earned the derogatory description (like, say, being a member of the Minnesota Vikings).

Lately I’ve come to calling my audience tokers.  I think that’s a fair descriptor of someone who lives an average ordinary life, works hard, raises a family, oh, and by the way, might puff on a joint now and then.  Cannabis use doesn’t really define them personally, but they are very cognizant of how it defines them socially if anyone outside their circle were to find out.  Besides, it brings to mind that Steve Miller song, which can only make people mellow and happy.  I think that tokers, though, should win out, because it fits well into a linguistic scheme for the currently legal drugs.  Smokers, Drinkers and Tokers, oh my!

For descriptions of us, I prefer cannabis consumers, but it is awfully stuffy.  I’m not really fond of recreational users because user reminds me of heroin or computer network security (both painfully dull) and recreational makes it sound like smoking a joint requires a tent or an RV or something.  Social user is a little better, it brings up connotations of social drinker, so there’s something to that.  (“I’m just a social drinker : not an alcoholic :: I’m just a social user : not a stoner” for you SAT fans.)  People engaged in the medicinal use of cannabis are following medical marijuana laws.  People following those laws are medical marijuana patients (I’m a medical marijuana caregiver under the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act, not the Oregon Medical Cannabis Act,) but they use medical cannabis.

So to you, my fellow toker, while it is important to consider the words we use, don’t let political correctness blind you from the richness of language we have to get our message across.  There is a context for every description of cannabis and its users and used correctly they can better express our views to a broader audience.  Let us butcher ol’ Bill Shakespeare (rumored to be a toker, too) and remember:

What’s in a name? That which we call cannabis
By any other name would toke as sweet.

*Weed, herb, smoke, grass, gage, ganja, muggles, tea, 420, and many more, all so much better than pot.  They aren’t for news writing, but in writing descriptive prose for a cannabis-friendly audience.  If I just told you I smoked a blunt with a celebrity, you’d think Snoop Dogg.  If I said I smoked some grass with a celebrity, you’d think Willie Nelson.  By the way, I have not smoked with either gentleman, and if you’re reading this, it would be this writer’s honor to engage you in some fine Oregon hospitality!

“Radical” Russ Belville is NORML’s Outreach coordinator and host of NORML SHOW LIVE, streaming weekdays at 1pm Pacific at http://live.norml.org.  The archived podcasts of every show are available at The NORML Stash Blog at http://stash.norml.org.

ECHO PARK, Calif. (KABC) — For the third time in a week, the Los Angeles Police Department has raided a medical marijuana facility.

Police arrested three people during the raid Thursday night at the Royal Temple of Zion in Echo Park.

Authorities say the facility has not applied for a hardship permit like all the other medical marijuana dispensaries, so selling the marijuana is illegal. About two pounds of marijuana were seized.

Oh my gosh!  A whole two pounds of marijuana!  Here in Oregon, that’s 2/3rds the amount of medical marijuana two registered patients may possess.  Even at ridiculously-inflated black-market-dictated California dispensary prices that’s less than $10,000 worth of marijuana.  I wonder how much it costs the city of Los Angeles to execute and prosecute such a raid?  Wanna bet it’s more than $10,000?

Those associated with the temple say it is a Rastafarian ministry, and it has the legal right to sell marijuana to the sick.

“This is a church run medical marijuana club providing medical marijuana for sick people, but we do it as a church,” said Pastor Craig Rubin.

Pastor Rubin believes police are targeting those that have been vocal about legalizing the drug.

Pastor Rubin, as you may remember, is the man who was offering patients a free eighth ounce of marijuana if they would come testify at the LA PLUM hearings two weeks ago.

“They seem to be particularly picking out people who have applied for these hardships who speak out,” said Pastor Rubin.

Members say because this is a place of worship they have not done anything illegal.

“It’s because we believe a cannabis from Revelations 22 is a plant for the healing of all nations and that people should have access to this plant. It’s not only benign, it’s benevolent,” said Pastor Rubin.

Yes, and I believe the Flying Spaghetti Monster brought forth cannabis from his noodly appendages to give to humanity so they may savor His Succulent Meatballs, so I shouldn’t be arrested for my pot smoking, either.

Sorry, I know many reading this have sincere religious beliefs and some have sincere beliefs that treat ganja as sacrament, but as an atheist I continue to be offended by the notion that because I treat all books as written works of men, not gods, I deserve to be arrested and jailed for my use of cannabis.  I completely support the right of religious folks to use ganja because I completely support the inalienable right of ALL folks to use cannabis, but when religious folks think they have a special and unique right to not be arrested for cannabis because they picked the right god, they are discriminating against me for my lack of a god.

Religion is not a “Get Out of Jail Free” card.  We don’t let certain religious folks get away with abusively beating their kids because some book says “Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.” We don’t let certain religious folks get away with marrying ten virgin brides because some book says “And if he have ten virgins given unto him by this law, he cannot commit adultery, for they belong to him, and they are given unto him; therefore is he justified.” We don’t let certain religious folks get away with murdering people because some book says “And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from whence they drove you out, and persecution is severer than slaughter, and do not fight with them at the Sacred Mosque until they fight with you in it, but if they do fight you, then slay them; such is the recompense of the unbelievers.”

Yes, we do have a First Amendment that prohibits Congress from enacting laws suppressing religion, but that is tempered by the compelling interest of the state in maintaining secular law.  To date, that has meant that certain religions get to use Schedule I ayahuasca and peyote, but not cannabis:

(Erowid) First, it is important to understand a little about the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. In 1990, the U.S. Supreme Court changed the legal standard by which First Amendment religious cases were decided with regard to “laws of general applicability”. For laws that apply generally and are not intended to ban a particular religious practice, there are Constitutional questions about what the US Government can and can’t do. Just because someone claims that their religion requires that they drive faster than the speed limits, the generally applicable laws regarding traffic safety still apply to those members of the fanciful “100 Mile-Per-Hour Church”.

(RFRA) Government may substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion only if it determines that application of the burden to the person
1. is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and
2. is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.

While the RFRA tests have not been applied at the Supreme Court level, they were considered in a Hawai’i case in which the state supreme court rejected the appellant’s claim that his religious use of cannabis was protected under RFRA and the First Amendment:

(Hawaii: State v. Sunderland) The government’s ability to enforce generally applicable prohibitions of socially harmful conduct, like its ability to carry out other aspects of public policy, “cannot depend on measuring the effects of a governmental action on a religious objector’s spiritual development.” Lyng[ v. Nw. Indian Cemetery Protective Ass'n, 485 U.S. 439, 451 (1988)]. To make an individual’s obligation to obey such a law contingent upon the law’s coincidence with his religious beliefs, except where the State’s interest is “compelling”–permitting him, by virtue of his beliefs, “to become a law unto himself,” Reynolds[, 98 U.S. at 167]–contradicts both constitutional tradition and common sense.

The closest the federal courts have come to ruling on this is the Guerrero case in the Ninth Circuit out of Guam, but the court had only to address Guerrero’s importation of marijuana, not his religious use of it:

(Cognitive Liberty) After litigating the case for more than ten years, the Ninth Circuit ruled on Tuesday that while the Religious Freedom Restoration Act might protect some Rastafarians who possess or smoke marijuana as part of their religious practices, it does not protect the importation of marijuana, even if that marijuana was intended for religious use. According to the Ninth Circuit, while the practice of Rastafarianism sanctions the smoking of marijuana, nowhere does the religion sanction the importation of marijuana.

Basically the government’s argument is that ayahuasca and peyote are used by so few both religiously and recreationally that letting a few First Peoples use them religiously doesn’t substantially burden the government from stopping others from using them recreationally.  But cannabis use is so prevalent that the minute you let some people use it religiously, everybody who uses it recreationally will suddenly find religion and that substantially burdens the government from keeping people from using cannabis recreationally.

In other words, Rastafarians are punished for their god picking too popular of a sacrament.

‘Ganja’ by Echo Movement, is Variety Tuesday’s great Toker Tune.

Echo Movement’s message is about love. The band have a passion to learn, communicate and appreciate life’s opportunities.

Their music respects the earth and honors the pursuit of happiness. Echo Movement says love is all you need.

The band has an impressive lineup of musicians, each member having their own distinctive accomplishments. Together, the eight piece band perform with incredibly vibrant creativity.

Echo Movement merges beach culture with island and world music to create a unique blend which they call ‘surf, reggae, soca’.

The band proves the new generation is built on independent accomplishments. Their songs are about people’s integrity and ability to take on any challenge while still remaining part of the community. With fans across the world, Echo Movement is living proof of their message.

Their music is packed with energy, the lyrics are universal and the hooks are infectious. The band have shared the stage with many greats including The Wailers and Passafire.

For more about Echo Movement, nominees in 2009 Marijuana Music Awards, check out echomovement.com and myspace.com/echomovement

Enjoy ‘Ganja’ by Echo Movement!

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You may recall the ONDCP “Burrito Taster” ad campaign I mocked a while back (The Drug Czar’s Latest Ads – Your Tax Dollars Hard at Work (even if “potheads” aren’t).  GanjaBlue via Twitter asked the universe for a parody of that ad featuring Michael Phelps.

Your wish is my command.  Feel free to copy and re-post this anywhere you like, so long as you provide a link back to the Stash. — “R”R

Rasta pot smokers win legal leeway in Italy | International | Reuters
ROME (Reuters) – Rastafarians caught in possession of marijuana in Italy may now have legal recourse, thanks to a high court ruling made public on Thursday.

Italy’s Court of Cassation ruled that since the Rastafari religion considers marijuana a sacrament, its members should be given special consideration when it comes to possession — and how much makes a drug trafficker.

The case before the judges dealt with a reggae musician who was sentenced to 16 months in prison by a lower court in Perugia after being found in possession of enough marijuana to roll 70 cigarettes.

The Court of Cassation annulled his sentence, saying the amount appeared appropriate for personal use considering the heavy amounts that Rastafarians smoke, and ordered an appellate court in Florence to review the case.

“He was convicted because of the amount … for trafficking, but it was for his own personal use,” said the defendant’s lawyer, Caterina Calia.

Rastafari, a religion that emerged in Jamaica in the 1930s, considers Ethiopia its spiritual home and that country’s former emperor, Haile Selassie, a divine figure.

Up to 10 percent of Jamaicans identify themselves as Rastas, but they are virtually unheard of in Roman Catholic Italy.

No disrespect intended, but personally, I find the religious use exception for ganja sacrament a bit troubling.  Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely 100% agree that if you sincerely believe ganja is a sacrament that brings you closer to Jah / God / Allah, then you should be free to smoke it.

What troubles me is that I’m an atheist, so I have no mystical supernatural tales to protect my use, and I shouldn’t need any.  Why is it that people who can never in a court of law prove that God wants them to smoke weed get immunity from prosecution, but I go to prison because I only believe in stuff that can be proven?

Then there is the question of which religions get that special immunity.  No religion under 70 years old need apply.  Rastas may get this break in Italy, but in the US sincere Americans who believe in ganja sacrament get to do time because their religion is younger than marijuana prohibition, so they must have formed the religion as an excuse to get high.

It’s like the medical marijuana situation.  Of course I want cancer and HIV patients to have medical marijuana; you’d have to be blackhearted not to.  But I want perfectly healthy people to have that right, too.

I guess it just seems absurd to me that if you had Jamaican Rasta, a disabled Californian, and me all passing around the same blunt, you’d have a believer, a patient, and a criminal.