Psychedelic tea-sipping Oregon sect sues Uncle Sam

Church of the Holy Light of the Queen fears feds will seize religion’s leaves

By Nick Budnick

The Portland Tribune, Sep 12, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (10 Reader comments)

sARAH TOOR and wbenjamin.org

Oregon’s U.S. Attorney Karin Immergut is named in a federal lawsuit by a religious sect that uses the plant Ayahuasca in its rites.

The Portland and Ashland outposts of a Brazil-based Christian sect known for ingesting a hallucinogenic tea during worship have filed a preemptive suit in federal court demanding that Uncle Sam — and Oregon’s top federal prosecutor, Karin Immergut — back away from their tea leaves.

Santo Daime (pronounced Die-May) is described as a sect that blends Catholicism and shamanistic Brazilian beliefs, founded in the Brazilian Amazon. It centers on a tea called ayahuasca, whose leaves — a blend of two different Amazonian plants — contain a hallucinogenic drug called DMT, or Dimethyltriptamine.

In 1999, federal agents searched the home of Jonathan Goldman, the head of the Ashland-based Oregon branch of Santo Daime, called the Church of the Holy Light of the Queen, where they intercepted a shipment of these leaves. And now it appears that Oregon church members are worried that another crackdown could be, well, brewing.

Members of the Oregon branch of the Santo Daime sect — including Alexandra Bliss Yeager, the head of its Portland branch, Church of the Divine Rose — filed suit in federal court in Medford last month asking for a temporary restraining order against U.S. Attorney General Robert Mukasey, U.S. Attorney for Oregon Immergut, and the federal Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who oversees enforcement of federal drug law.

Immergut told the Portland Tribune she was a bit surprised to be named in a lawsuit, as it doesn't appear to be based on anything that's happened under her tenure.

“I get named in a lot of (cases),” she said. “The only manner that my office is involved is as the representative of the Department of Justice in Oregon.”

She added that the case is being handled by the Department of Justice civil division based in Washington, D.C.

According to the lawsuit, the federal government in 2001 reserved the right to take action against the church; but the suit does not allege any active investigation.

Judge rules against church

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