Ecobreves – BRAZIL: Ayahuasca Consumption to Be Regulated

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 6 2006 (IPS) - Brazil's National Anti-Drugs Council decided to create a multidisciplinary work group to draft norms and create a list of the institutions that use in religious rites the Amazonian plant ayahuasca, which has hallucinogenic properties. Official regulation that “consolidates the legitimacy” of ayahuasca is a positive step, overcoming the obstacles of sending to followers in other countries, said Alex Polari, coordinator of ecological agriculture projects for the religion known as Santo Daime.

But “we propose to take the issue out of the anti-drug policy sphere,” assigning it, for example, to an inter-ministerial commission for religious minorities, he told Tierramérica.

Ayahuasca, also known as “yagé”, has been consumed for millennia by indigenous tribes in the Amazon Basin, and is legal in many Latin American and European countries, and even the United States.