Prohibition, Religious Freedom, and Human Rights: Regulating Traditional Drug Use

Foreword: David Courtwright.- Introduction.- Human Rights and Drug Conventions: Searching for Humanitarian Reason in Drug Laws.- Coca in Debate: The Contradiction and Conflict between the UN Drug Conventions and the Real World.- Marijuana and Religious Freedom in the United States.- Peyote, Race, and Equal Protection in the United States.- From the Sacrilegious to the Sacramental: A Global Review of Rastafari Cannabis Case Law.- The Expansion of Brazilian Ayahuasca Religions: Law, Culture and Locality.- Framing the Chew: Narratives of Development, Drugs, and Danger with Regard to Khat (Catha Edulis).- Salvia divinorum, Hallucinogens, and the Determination of Medical Utility.- "Legalize Spiritual Discovery": The Trials of Dr. Timothy Leary.- Cannabis and the Psychedelics: Reviewing the UN Drug Conventions.- Beyond Religious Freedom: Psychedelics and Cognitive Liberty.- Fear and Loathing in Drugs Policy: Risk, Rights, and Approaches to Drug Policy and Practice.

Beatriz Caiuby Labate has a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil. Her main areas of interest are the study of psychoactive substances, drug policy, shamanism, ritual, and religion. She is Visiting Professor at the Drug Policy Program of the Center for Economic Research and Education (CIDE) in Aguascalientes, Mexico. She is also Research Associate at the Institute of Medical Psychology, Heidelberg University, co-founder of the Nucleus for Interdisciplinary Studies of Psychoactives (NEIP), and editor of NEIP's website (http://www.neip.info). She is author, co-author, and co-editor of twelve books, one special-edition journal, and several peer-reviewed articles. For more information, see: http://bialabate.net/



Clancy Cavnar, Psy.D., is currently completing her postdoctoral hours in clinical psychology at the Marin Treatment Center, a methadone clinic in San Rafael, California. In 2011, she received a doctorate in clinical psychology (PsyD) from John F. Kennedy University in Pleasant Hill, California, with a dissertation on gay and lesbian people's experiences with ayahuasca. She attended New College of the University of South Florida and completed an undergraduate degree in liberal arts in 1982. She attended the San Francisco Art Institute and graduated with a Master of Fine Art in painting in 1985. In 1993, she received a certificate in substance abuse counseling from the extension program of the University of California at Berkeley and, in 1997, she graduated with a master's in counseling from San Francisco State University. In that same year, she got in touch with the Santo Daime in the USA, and has traveled several times to Brazil since then. She is Research Associate of the Nucleus for Interdisciplinary Studies of Psychoactives (NEIP), and co-editor, with Beatriz Caiuby Labate, of three books: The Therapeutic Use of Ayahuasca (Springer,2014); Prohibition, Religious Freedom, and Human

The meaning of drugs is changing, with the twentieth-century language of 'drug abuse' and policy of a 'war on drugs' breaking down. Global trade and the internet are eroding the regime of prohibition, and at the same time the resilience and recovery of traditional forms of drug use are pointing towards new strategies for the integration of drug use into modern societies. These vivid portraits of long-established drug cultures and their collisions with the blunt instrument of criminal law expose the contradictions of current drug politics and illuminate the alternatives. 

Mike Jay, author, High Society: mind-altering drugs in history and culture