Brother Louv forgot the one accessory required of all serious religions... a silly hat.

It’s Monday, which means it’s time to figure out Who Has “Radical” Russ Pissed Off This Week?

I’ve been ranting full bore lately about the situation in Colorado.  Specifically, I had ranted on and on about people who call themselves marijuana activists, but then fight tooth and nail against legalization if it doesn’t particularly match their vision of legalization.  I disparaged them as “batshit crazies” and “full-blown whackaloons”, and ended with “…some of them put ‘Rev.’ before their name…”

Now some of the “Rev’s” in Colorado are hopping mad and saying they won’t support the legalization campaign if “this is what NORML thinks” of them.  Which, again, is a case of someone putting personal sleights over the cause.  It shouldn’t matter one iota what I think (and it is what *I* think; it was a personal comment on a blog, not a post here at NORML) and if it changes your support of ending the prohibition of your sacrament, I question how much you really consider it a sacrament.  I mean, the head of the NAACP could call me out personally as an ignorant inbred cracker and it wouldn’t shake my support of the NAACP or ending racism one bit.

The whole subject of religion and cannabis is difficult for me, because I am an atheist.  So for me to distinguish between the people who sincerely believe the entire universe was created so sentient hairless apes on one particular wet rock could praise its creator by consuming in great quantity one particular plant life form the creator made holy from the people who choose to insincerely parrot a belief structure to avoid prison time is like trying to figure out which is faster, a unicorn or the Starship Enterprise.

But I am assured that there are, indeed, plenty of very devout believers in cannabis sacrament as part of a greater religious spirituality.  Certainly the Rastafarians and Coptic Christians have been espousing this belief for a very long time.  Even the modern faiths that have sprung up, recognizing cannabis as sacrament, needn’t clear any hurdle higher than Henry VIII wanting a divorce in 1534 or Joseph Smith wanting multiple wives in 1830 or L. Ron Hubbard writing a sci-fi novel in 1953.  So long as your religion is more than just “Let’s smoke a lot of pot”, I’m fine with it.

However, in my work covering marijuana law reform, for every devout sincere man of faith I find, there are a dozen I find who are just recreational pot smokers who cloak themselves in mantle of false piety in an attempt to avoid prosecution.  These are the “Revs” I disparage.  They are as religious as the 18-year-old in 1969 who suddenly became a religious conscientious objector when his number came up in a draft lottery.  I feel they simultaneously damage the credibility of both marijuana law reform and religious faith in marijuana sacrament.

Personally, I find the need to argue that cannabis is a First Amendment spiritual sacrament to be as unnecessary as arguing a medical necessity defense.  The 9^th Amendment tells us just because a right isn’t listed in the Constitution doesn’t mean it ain’t a right and the 10^th tells us if a power isn’t granted to the feds or the states, it’s the people’s.  Growing and consuming plants is one of those inalienable natural rights that needs no further explanation.  Whether you believe it’s sacrament, medicine, or just a good time, it’s your right.

So to the “Rev’s” out there, I apologize for disparaging you, if that’s what it takes to get you on board for legalizing your sacrament.  But I’d be more convinced of your religious sincerity if the words of a mortal atheist blogger weren’t enough to dissuade your support.

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

Our Executive Director, Allen St. Pierre, has penned a column for HIGH TIMES examining Roger Christie of the THC Ministry and the fight for recognition of religious use of cannabis.  One of my regular readers, a member of Roger’s church, has blasted Allen for “attacking” the church and its leader.  I felt I needed to weigh in on the issue.

First off, full disclosure: I am an out and proud atheist* who was raised in a Mormon background (draw your own conclusions).  Now some folks would say my atheism disqualifies me from commenting on religious matters.  I say it makes me the perfect neutral observer – I don’t favor any one religion over any other.

Second, if you believe, as I do, that all adults have a natural right to use cannabis (and, for that matter, any other plants), then you believe that religion can be one of many valid reasons why an adult may choose to use cannabis.  Just as health care can be another valid reason.  Or a Dave Matthews concert.

So, yes, I completely believe that you have a religious right to use cannabis.  I even believe that the First Amendment of the Constitution protects that right.

However – seeking recognition of that right in American courts is a fool’s errand.

As Allen notes, no court in the land is going to recognize a religion’s right to use cannabis.  The reasoning is that government must recognize your religious rights, unless doing so puts an undue burden on government’s enforcement of other laws.  For example, suppose you belong to a religion that mandates sacrificing a virgin on the equinox.  Obviously you’re not allowed to follow your religion when to do so puts an undue burden on the government’s mandate to prevent homicide.

The government has decided, and courts have affirmed, that they must prevent people from using cannabis.  Therefore, you cannot practice your ganja sacrament, because that places an undue burden on government preventing cannabis toking.  The courts know the minute they rule that THC Ministry has a legitimate right to use ganja sacrament, there will suddenly be millions of adherents to that church overnight and it would be impossible to determine who’s toking reverently and who’s just toking.

Yet I am still supportive of fighting the government to recognize religious use of cannabis.  There are slivers of hope, in that the courts have protected some Brazilian church’s use of ayahuasca, a powerful hallucinogen, and some Southwest Native American church’s use of peyote, another powerful hallucinogen.  But in these cases, the courts have figured that (a) these are churches and uses that go back through centuries of documented religious use, (b) very few people outside these churches use those drugs for non-religious purposes, (c) it is very easy to identify sincere adherents to the faith, and (d) letting these tiny few people use those drugs is not going to burden the government in its mandate to ban those drugs for the non-religious.  There is even a case of a Rasta in Guam who the courts implied was probably a bona fide religious user of cannabis and that should be protected, but unfortunately the case centered on whether he could import cannabis into Guam, not whether he could possess and use it while there, and the courts decided against him.

So to that end, I have no problem with Roger Christie and the THC Ministry.  However, I still say that if any religious use case is going to be won (and excuse me for being blunt) it is not going to be by a white guy from Hawaii who graduated in the Summer of Love who presaged his reverence for cannabis by opening up hemp companies and selling weed.  An American court might recognize the religious use of a bona fide Rastafarian, but even then, the decision would be limited to that group.

Even so, a federal case would have to come before the courts to be argued in the first place.  As a lawyer friend of mine who is certified to litigate before the Supreme Court told me, “First it would have to be a federal arrest, which we know only 1% of marijuana arrests are.  Then it would have to be enough marijuana for the federal cop to press charges and not just confiscate it and give a warning.  But it couldn’t be so much that a prosecutor could argue intent to deliver.  Finally, and I hate to be crass, but it would have to be a genuine dreadlocked black Rastafarian, preferably from outside the states, to sway a judge that it’s not just a hippie trying to get high.  So if you can get me a federal park ranger arresting a black Rastafarian with less than an ounce but more than a joint performing religious use of cannabis in a national park and a prosecutor willing to press that case in federal court, I can get a decision exempting religious use of cannabis… for that guy and the guys and gals like him in that church.”

I’m not saying it’s right.  I’m just saying that’s the way it is.

Where I have my issues with Roger Christie and the THC Ministry is in the selling of weed (excuse me, I meant, “freely giving sacrament to members of the church who then proceed to give the church cash donations based on a list that suggests the proper donation per eighth ounce of sacrament that only coincidentally matches the black market prices for weed”) and the selling of $250 “Religious Sanctuary Kits”.

From the THC Ministry website:

Minister’s Sanctuary Kit: $250 donation

The Kit includes: Sanctuary Plaques, ID Cards, Citizen’s Rule Book, 150 page manual to educate and empower a new Cannabis Sacrament Minister, Sacramental Plant tags, THC Minsitry [sic] Cannabis and Religion Guide and more …

For example, this kit includes a “Letter of Good Standing”, which is the key document to acquire state permission to legally marry people as a “cannabis sacrament” minister.

Which claims…

THC Ministry Cannabis and Religion Guide: 130 pages of research, case law, articles and interviews concerning cannabis and religion.  Included in the kit are real Motions to Dismiss marijuana charges written by lawyers and used successfully by members of our Ministry.

In other words, Roger Christie is selling to the naive cannabis consumer for $250 a kit that promises “sanctuary” from “marijuana charges”.  Perhaps some of his members have used these motions to dismiss successfully; however, I have reported case after case after case after case after case over the past eighteen months where religious cannabis users are now studying their Bibles behind bars.  I could even accept sales of these kits if they came with the disclaimer, “WARNING: US Courts have failed to recognize the First Amendment right to cannabis sacrament.  We cannot guarantee your religious use won’t land you in jail.”  But without disclaimers, this pitch is reprehensible.

Another problem I have with the ministry: most religions aren’t based on their sacrament and most religions aren’t taking “donations” for it.  You don’t go to the Catholic Mass for the wine sacrament, you go for the ancient traditions, the Bible teaching, and the pew aerobics (though, interestingly enough, during Prohibition you could get a religious exemption for wine).  When you donate to the collection plate, it is not “suggested” how much you donate per little-paper-cup-shot of wine you got from the priest.

Even the Brazilian and Native American churches provide guidance in this concept: they aren’t using ayahuasca or peyote on a daily basis.  Those are reserved for sacred ceremonies that are performed infrequently and within specific settings.

I’ve said it before to the medical users and I’ll say it to the religious users: carving out an exemption for yourselves from the criminality of cannabis prohibition is always going to lead to undue restrictions for you at best and a jail cell at worst.  Only through legalization for all adults, even healthy atheists like me, can any cannabis user fully realize their medical and spiritual rights to cannabis.  If a Rastafarian, a cancer victim, and I all share a joint, we are not a “believer”, a “patient”, and a “criminal”.  We are all just human beings with the same inalienable right to use plants for any reason we choose so long as we harm no others doing so.  Your health and your religion do not change that joint in any way.

*I even hate that tag “atheist”.  That has such negative framing of “godless amoral unspiritual nihilist who mocks all those of faith”.  I use it in the sense of its roots: a = no, theo = God, ism = system.  I have no God system.  I do not profess to know whether there is God or not; I merely find no need to live my life within a system that recognizes one.

I’d actually prefer the mantle of “Jeffersonian Deist”.  Thomas Jefferson found all the miracles and deism around Christ to be silly superstitions of Iron Age shepherds and unreasonable to an enlightened mind and he published a Bible that kept all the philosophy of Jesus and deleted the walking on water and God’s son stuff.  But he, like other Founders, expressed a Deism, a belief that there was a Divine Providence, a Creator who brought us all into being.

For me, that “Divine Providence” is the infinitely complex Cosmos which itself may be conscious at a level far higher than a hairless hominid can comprehend, and, if so, is so far above needing the worship of some tiny bits of starstuff on a watery rock that our prayers to affect it are like the wishes of bacteria to affect the Stock Market.

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.

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge in San Francisco Monday sentenced a Lake County man to 10 years in prison for growing more than 1,000 marijuana plants, saying the marijuana activist appeared to “want to be a martyr for the cause.”

The sentence for Charles “Eddy” Lepp, 56, was the mandatory minimum under federal law for growing more than 1,000 plants.

U.S. District Judge Marilyn Patel said Lepp didn’t qualify for a so-called “safety valve” exception with a lesser sentence because he testified at his trial last fall that he was a proud leader of others who grew marijuana on his land.

Patel told Lepp, “I think Mr. Lepp is very proud of what he’s been doing. The problem is that now unfortunately, Mr. Lepp, it’s caught up with you.”

“Maybe you want to be martyr for the cause,” Patel said. “That will be your lot.”

The U.S. law doesn’t allow the safety-valve exception for people who are leaders of drug crimes.

Patel said she thought the length of the sentence was excessive, but said it would be up to Congress to change the law.

I’ve been working in marijuana law reform now for four years.  Eddy Lepp is the first activist I’ve known personally to become a prisoner of drug war.  I last spoke with Eddy last September at our Portland Hempstalk:

Click here to view the embedded video.

To know that this gentle man is going to prison for a decade at age 56 makes me physically ill.  This religious man who so bravely helped so many sick and dying and sense-threatened Californians find relief through the medicine grown on his land is going to spend more time in prison than the average rapist, manslaughterer, and child molester because our country has not yet overcome its prudish impulse to punish people for moral reasons.

President Obama, you can commute his sentence.  With the stroke of a pen, you can see that Rev. Eddy Lepp receives no more punishment for being convicted of growing plants for sick people than Scooter Libby received for felony convictions of obstruction of justice, perjury (twice), and providing false statements to federal investigators.  Eddy Lepp’s felony conviction will still stand, but we will save the taxpayers the unnecessary burden of feeding, clothing, and housing a man who is no threat to society.

Or you could do the truly just thing, Mr. President, and pardon Eddy Lepp, removing all prison punishment and the felony convictions, seeing as Eddy Lepp was forbidden from entering any real sort of defense to the charges, since federal courts do not allow testimony regarding California’s medical use law.

I just cannot stomach the notion that people that ordered torture are getting away with it, people that greedily sacked Wall Street are getting away with it, and the guy that ordered 9/11 has gotten away with it, but one middle-aged Rastafarian minister who grows medical marijuana must be punished according to strict adherence to the “rule of law”.  President Obama: FREE EDDY LEPP!

Call President Obama at 202-456-1111 and tell him to FREE EDDY LEPP!

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.