The “booming psychedelic church scene in the U.S. could be about to shift from the underground into the legal overground,” reports Jules Evans in the Substack newsletter Ecstatic Integration (April 8). There are anywhere up to 500 psychedelic churches in the U.S., of which “roughly 97 percent operate illegally and more or less un-transparently.” But the gradual shift to legality could be seen in several recent cases, in a pattern that is expected to be followed by other similar churches. The Celestial Heart Church, an ayahuasca church founded in California by Kai Karel, is reportedly about to settle with the DEA over its right to practice using ayahuasca, according to one of its lawyers, Sean McAllister. This victory follows a similar settlement last year between the DEA and another ayahuasca church, the Church of the Eagle and Condor, represented by the same legal team. McAllister says that other suits are already taking place, with a federal court in Utah ruling in favor of a mushroom church in February, and a new case coming in Florida. Evans notes that before these legal victories, only two other psychedelic churches had successfully sued the DEA in the early 2000s.
“This latest result shows the DEA’s willingness to settle rather than go to court, if they think they will lose,” Evans writes. “On the other hand, if they think they can win, they have been prepared to go to court against psychedelic churches, as they did against ayahuasca church Soul Quest (which has now gone bankrupt after it was sued by the family of a participant who died during an ayahuasca ceremony).” The DEA’s criteria for going to court include a number of factors, such as how secure a church’s supply of controlled substances is, how good their safety protocols are, whether “they seem like a genuine church or just a business, and so on.” Evans adds that there’s now a template that other churches can follow to pressure the DEA to settle and grant them an exemption to engage in psychedelic practices. Psychedelic churches have also tried to petition the DEA to get legal exemption through the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), but this has been a long and difficult process, with many churches remaining in limbo. “Now, some churches seem intent on forcing the DEA to act through lawsuits. This approach seems to be working. And perhaps it will in turn push the DEA into being more active in the petition process as well,” Evans concludes.
