Peyote
Foundation
Tests
Patience
of
Local
Law
Enforcement,
May
Test
Arizona
Religious
Freedom
Law
1/15/99
Leonard Mercado says all he wants to do is live a simple life. But life became much more complicated for him and his family last Friday, when local law enforcement agents arrived on his doorstep in Kearny, Arizona to serve a warrant for unpaid child support, and left the next day with more than 11,000 peyote cacti. According to Mercado, the officers who served the warrant for unpaid child support (which Mercado settled that day) were members of the local narcotics task force. A spokesman for the Pinal County Sheriff's Department could not confirm this, but Charles Ratliff, a spokesman for the County Attorney's Office later denied it. Ratliff said one of the officers who served the warrant noticed the peyote, which was housed in greenhouses on Mercado's property. The officers then obtained a search warrant and confiscated the plants. The County Attorney's Office will decide whether to pursue criminal charges against Mercado pending a review of police reports. Mercado is the director of The Peyote Foundation, a private non-profit organization whose stated mission is to educate the public about the spiritual significance of peyote and to promote the plant's genetic diversity through cultivation and conservation. This is the third time in four years that local authorities have seized peyote from Mercado. In 1995, Pinal County Attorney Gilbert Figueroa declined to prosecute Mercado for possessing some 1,000 plants, and returned the peyote to the Foundation. Two years later a new County Prosecutor, Robert Carter Olson, refused to return to Mercado a single peyote button, known as a "chief" or "grandfather" peyote, that had been seized from Mercado's medicine bag. Mercado went to court to have the peyote returned to him, but the judge in the case denied his claim, saying that Mercado had failed to prove he had a legitimate claim to possess peyote under Arizona law. Under the federal Religious Freedom Act, only members of the Native American Church are exempted from prosecution for possessing peyote. But the Arizona law is broader, allowing a defense by anyone who can prove that the peyote is used in connection with "a bona fide practice of a religious belief, and as an integral part of a religious exercise, and in a manner not dangerous to public health or safety." Mercado says that he and his family are members of the Native American Church, but the judge in the 1997 civil case had not believed him. This week, a spokesman for the Church confirmed that the Mercados are in fact members and that religious ceremonies are performed at the Foundation. The spokesman has been negotiating with the county attorney's office for the release of the peyote. For its part, the county attorney's office, still under the direction of Robert Carter Olson, has taken pains to assure the public that the sacred plants will be treated respectfully. Ratliff told DRCNet that offers by the Native American Church to claim the peyote have been "taken under advisement" but that no decision has been made yet to release the plants.. Many of the people DRCNet spoke with in researching this story said that while Mercado's cultivation of peyote is unorthodox by the traditions of the Native American Church, which generally hold that peyote must be found and harvested in the wild, his earnest belief in the sacred uses of the plant is obvious to anyone who knows him or visits his property. Richard Glen Boire, an attorney in Davis, California and editor of The Entheogen Law Reporter, said, "Mercado's entire lifestyle is steeped in a reverence for peyote, so there's no question about his sincerity, and that's really the only issue under Arizona's exemption. It appears to me that this is another instance of government trumping individual rights, and indeed the preeminent right of the freedom of religion in order to wage this monstrosity of a war on drugs." Mercado said he believes the Peyote Foundation is a thorn in the side of the county attorney's office. "We're not evangelists here but we're also not doing anything in secret," he said from his home this week, "and I've heard throught he grapevine how Robert Carter Olson said he's not going to have the Peyote Foundation existing in his county." Mercado is prepared for a court battle, he says, and would like to see the issue settled. But, he said, "I don't think this can really get fixed in the courtroom. For me it gets fixed in the ceremony. I've already settled my heart, but these guys don't know about that. So I'm going to have to go in there and play that game, even though for me it's just not the jurisdiction that I seek my justice in." In his 1997 decision denying Mercado's civil claim, the judge wrote that Mercado had "demonstrated himself to be an addicted user of peyote" who presented himself "as some carny offering cotton candy for any and all to use." But Mercado says that is not what he, or the Foundation, is about. "We're not here because we believe that peyote is for everybody," he said, "and that's why I believe that this threat that we seem to pose is really nonexistent. Because we're not out trying to get people to eat peyote, we're simply trying to preserve the species and live a simple and a good life." The Peyote Foundation is updating its web site daily throughout this crisis. You can read about it, and learn more about the Foundation's practices at http://www.peyote.net. Information about the Entheogen Law Reporter can be found at http://www.specmind.com/rgbindex.htm. See also the statement of Reuben A. Snake, Jr. (1937 - 1993), to a gathering of Native American religious leaders in Washington, DC in 1990 at http://cjpf.org/SNAKE.html. (Leonard Mercado and Richard Glen Boire have been interviewed for this week's Drug Reform Coordination Network News radio show, online at http://www.drcnet.org/drcnn/ from late Friday afternoon.)
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