Let Natives inhale in peace

Americans hold religious freedom dear, enshrining it in the First Amendment. Even when the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified in 1919, banning “intoxicating liquors,” enforcement under the Volstead Act excluded sacramental wines.

That principle is being tested in San Bernardino County involving the California Evergreen Farms Native American Church, which cultivates marijuana for use in its religious ceremonies. But on Nov. 14, 2024 and Jan. 17, 2025 the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department conducted raids “and purportedly destroyed thousands of sacramental pot plants,” reported the Southern California News Group.

A lawsuit by the church and founder James Warren “Flaming Eagle” Mooney last month was transferred from state to federal court. Defendants include the county and Sheriff Shannon D. Dicus. A statement from Dicus’ office said its investigation “resulted in evidence of criminal activity associated with an illegal marijuana cultivation operation where multiple arrests were made, and additional evidence was seized.”

Marijuana for recreational use by adults was legalized by the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, Proposition 64, which 57% of voters passed in 2016. There’s also a Supreme Court precedent from 2006, Gonzales v. O Centro. It concerned a religion originating in the Amazon rainforest, whose ceremonies used a hallucinogenic tea made up of a substance controlled by federal drug laws.

In the unanimous decision, Chief Justice John Roberts cited “the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which prohibits the Federal Government from substantially burdening a person’s exercise of religion.” Although state law is being used by Dicus, not federal law, it seems to us the same principle should apply.

And there’s the American Indian Religious Freedom Act Amendments of 1994, which stipulated “the use, possession, or transportation of peyote by an Indian for bona fide traditional ceremonial purposes … shall not be prohibited by the United States or any other state.” That’s for peyote, not marijuana. But again, the same principle of religious liberty should apply.

With real crimes needing the attention of law enforcement, this also is a major waste of the taxpayers’ resources. Dicus should drop the case.