Peyote Importation Charge Dismissed as ‘Attack’ on Liberty
Calling the drug war a “menacing attack” on constitutional liberty, New Mexico’s chief federal judge has dismissed peyote importation charges against a white member of the Native American Church.
U.S. District Judge Juan Burciaga said Wednesday that the fight against drug trafficking is “a wildfire that threatens to consume those fundamental rights of the individual deliberately enshrined in our Constitution.”
Lawrence R. Boyll, 56, of Mill Valley, Calif., was accused of mailing about eight pounds of peyote, a hallucinogenic cactus, from Mexico last May to his own post office box in San Cristobal, N.M., north of Taos. He was arrested near Taos by U.S. Customs agents.
Boyll, the son of a Methodist minister, said he has used peyote only as a religious sacrament since becoming a member of the Native American Church in Taos nearly 10 years ago. He said the peyote obtained in May would have lasted church members at least a year.
Congress exempted religious usage of peyote in 1965, but the prosecution argued that it never authorized importation.
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