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Page Number: 21.0

16 

GONZALES v. O CENTRO ESPIRITA BENEFICENTE 
UNIAO DO VEGETAL 
Opinion of the Court 

have  been  surprising  to  find  that  this  was  such  a  case, 
given  the  longstanding  exemption  from  the  Controlled
Substances  Act  for  religious  use  of  peyote,  and  the  fact 
that  the  very  reason  Congress  enacted  RFRA  was  to  re-
spond to a decision denying a claimed right to sacramental 
See  42  U. S. C. 
use  of  a  controlled  substance. 
§2000bb(a)(4).  And in fact the Government has not offered 
evidence demonstrating that granting the UDV an exemp-
tion  would  cause  the  kind  of  administrative  harm  recog-
nized  as  a  compelling  interest  in  Lee,  Hernandez,  and 
Braunfeld.  The Government failed to convince the District 
Court at the preliminary injunction hearing that health or 
diversion  concerns  provide  a  compelling  interest  in  ban-
It  cannot 
ning  the  UDV’s  sacramental  use  of  hoasca. 
compensate  for  that  failure  now  with  the  bold  argument 
that  there  can  be  no  RFRA  exceptions  at  all  to  the  Con-
trolled  Substances  Act.  See  Tr.  of  Oral  Arg.  17  (Deputy 
Solicitor  General  statement  that  exception  could  not  be
made  even  for  “rigorously  policed”  use  of  “one  drop”  of 
substance “once a year”). 

IV 

Before the District Court, the Government also asserted 
an  interest  in  compliance  with  the  1971  United  Nations 
Convention  on  Psychotropic  Substances,  Feb.  21,  1971, 
[1979–1980],  32  U. S. T.  543,  T. I. A. S.  No.  9725.  The 
Convention, signed by the United States and implemented 
by  the  Controlled  Substances  Act,  calls  on  signatories  to 
prohibit  the  use  of  hallucinogens,  including  DMT.    The 
Government  argues  that  it  has  a  compelling  interest  in 
meeting  its  international  obligations  by  complying  with 
the Convention. 

The District Court rejected this interest because it found 
that  the  Convention  does  not  cover  hoasca.    The  court 
relied on the official commentary to the Convention, which 
notes that “Schedule I [of the Convention] does not list . . .