Hello, I’m Casey Hardison, In 2004, I was arrested for being concerned in the manufacture of LSD, 2C-B and DMT among others things. I served nearly 10 years in UK prisons.
At trial I asserted I could not be made guilty by statute for acts that are intrinsically innocent. I centered my defence on freedom of thought, otherwise known as Cognitive Liberty.
As an ideal, Cognitive Liberty aims square in the heart of what Jacob Sullum said:
Seeking a medical or religious exemption from drug prohibition amounts to asserting that my use of this substance is important, that it deserves respect in a way that more frivolous uses do not … The urge to offer such excuses is based on the sense that drug use is morally suspect without an elaborate and serious sounding defense … Wine drinkers generally do not feel compelled to proclaim that their beverage was endorsed by God, that it relieves anxiety or reduces their risk of heart disease. They simply say, “I like a nice glass of wine.”
Saying this, I do not deny the anxieties relieved nor the genuine insights produced in moments of awe, reverence and inspiration under the influence of psychoactive drugs like LSD, cannabis, mushrooms or ayahuasca.
Having experienced these effects first hand, I can see why one would make appeals for such religious exemptions when pushed into a corner by the State or its agents.
Yet, here in the spiritual home of the Church of Prohibition, these justifications are becoming untenable as more and more disparate groups use the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to seek exemptions from a variety of generally applicable laws.
Using the RFRA, corporations have become a law unto themselves. This contradicts both constitutional tradition and common sense: it asserts a private right to ignore laws generally applicable to everybody else.
According to the Supreme Court, the RFRA exempts:
the Native American and Uniao de Vegetal churches from provisions in the Controlled Substances Act
religious institutions from provisions in anti-discrimination laws
corporations, like Hobby Lobby, from the birth control provisions in the Affordable Care Act
religious congregations from laws prohibiting animal ‘sacrifice’
religious medical personnel from providing legal medical services to patients
The RFRA has become an excuse for superstition, sectarianism and bigotry.
As it continues to gather public scorn, I predict the RFRA will collapse under it’s own folly. We need look no further than the recent RFRA bill in the State of Indiana to see this in full.
In seeking exemptions under the RFRA, religious groups must present a belief system, complete with metaphysical or supernatural ideas, acceptable to the judges.
This presents a fundamental conflict, I think that justifying my use of drugs to the State, especially by a claim to supernaturals, is unnecessary, counterproductive and suspect.
In my opinion, it is way past time for the Cognitive Liberty social movement Ruiz-Sierra called for:
Cognitive liberty as a concept exposes the argument that the drug policy reform movement has conspicuously shied away from making: namely that drug prohibition is untenable because it infringes freedom of thought, the fundamental principle that underlies so many other constitutional guarantees.
In delivering the majority opinion in Palko v Connecticut (1937), US Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cordozo made it clear:
freedom of thought … is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom. With rare aberrations a pervasive recognition of that truth can be traced in our history, political and legal.
When one understands that Cognitive Liberty is antecedent to religion, one recognizes that these ‘sacred’ belief systems, these justifications, each start with thought.
So it matters not what you believe, that you consent to alter your own mental functioning with drugs is enough for Cognitive Liberty to trump the absolute prohibitions of the Controlled Substances Act 1970 or other similar legislation.
Envisioning a post prohibition world requires us to think outside of the box. We alter our mental functioning with drugs to change the way we think feel and behave. It has ever been thus.
But Article 4 of the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs mandates that State signatories limit certain drug activities to legitimate medical and scientific applications. This results in one monolithic Western medical model for all of humanity
Disbanding the church of prohibition requires a concerted effort to target this very provision for it interferes with our right to self-medicate, commune with our most sacred selves, and most importantly enjoy the freedom of taking our minds wherever they wish to lead us.
-fiat lux!
Casey x