Roar Mikalsen - HUMAN RISING - radiofri..

576 Denne kirken består hovedsakelig av indianere, men også hvite: Robert Lawrence Boyll
ble i september 1991, i US District court of New Mexico, (og i ankesaken) frifunnet for å
importere peyotekaktusen fra Mexico til USA, fordi han gjorde gjeldende at
narkotikalovgivningen på området var i strid med hans rett til fritt å velge sin religion. Her er
et utdrag av Dommer Burciagas begrunnelse: ”The Government’s ‘war on drugs’ has
become a wildfire that threatens to consume those fundamental rights of the individual
deliberately enshrined in our Constitution. Ironically, as we celebrate the 200 th anniversary
of the Bill of Rights, the tattered Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable
searches and seizures and the now frail Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination or
deprivation of liberty without due process have fallen as casualties in this ‘war on drugs’. It
was naïve of this Court to hope that this erosion of constitutional protections would stop at
the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. But today the ‘war’ targets one of the most deeply held
fundamental rights – the First Amendment right to freely exercise one’s religion. (…) The
issue presented is the recurring conflict between the Native American Church members’
right to freely exercise their religion through the ceremonial use of peyote and the
Government’s efforts to eradicate illegal drugs. To the Government, peyote is a dangerous
hallucinogen. To Robert Boyll, peyote is both a sacrament and a deity essential to his
religion. But this matter concerns competing interests far greater than those relating to this
small spineless cactus having psychedelic properties. It draws forth a troublesome
constitutional conflict which arises from fundamentally different perspectives of peyote.
In its ‘war’ to free our society from the devastating effect of drugs, the Government slights
its duty to observe the fundamental freedom of individuals to practice the religion of their
choice, regardless of race. Simply put, the Court is faced with the quintessential
constitutional conflict between an inalienable right upon which this country was founded
and the response by the Government to the swelling political passions of the day. In this
fray, the Court is compelled to halt this menacing attack on our constitutional freedoms.”
James Gray, Why our Drug Laws Have Failed; a Judical Indictment on the War on Drugs, s
115.
577
Og ettersom statens representanter ikke fornuftsmessig kan forsvare narkotikapolitikken,
gjør de hva de kan for å motvirke en informert debatt ved forsøksvis å heve seg over
debatten på et ”moralsk” grunnlag. Dette gjør de ved i tide og utide å trekke frem
”signaleffekten” som påskudd for å nekte å ta debatten, men som vi har sett, er dette ikke
mindre skamløst fra våre politikeres side, enn om de for femti år siden ville nektet å
diskutere urbefolkningens rettigheter på grunn av ”signaleffekten”. Det eneste signalet våre
politikere sender ut ved å gjemme seg bak denne, er nemlig om en systembasert intoleranse
og ignoranse, og om deres egen manglende evne/vilje til å ta et oppgjør med politikken som
er en konsekvens av denne — samt de skamløse overgrepene som ligger til grunn for den.
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