Vox refers to it to explain why RFRA will probably not let you start a marijuana church - unless you are Rastafarian.
- Click here for the article here.
. . . just like religious freedom laws have been around for decades, so have long-shot attempts to smoke marijuana by claiming religious beliefs. A 2013 look at these cases by Montana lawyer John Rhodes, published in the Oklahoma City University Law Review, found that these claims have almost always failed, except in situations involving Rastafarians, a religious group that considers marijuana a sacrament.
Defendants claimed they used marijuana for religious purposes, but judges by and large didn't buy it. One court told a defendant that his "professed beliefs have an ad hoc quality that neatly justif[ies] his desire to smoke marijuana." Other courts weren't as blunt, but they generally discarded non-Rastafarian religious beliefs as phony, according to Rhodes.
When it came to Rastafarian defendants, courts only allowed their marijuana use in limited settings. Judges found the government had a compelling interest to restrict pot in public settings, and they didn't allow criminal operations that sell the drug.
Based on these precedents, it's very unlikely that members of Indiana's First Church of Cannabis will have any luck trying to use marijuana under their new religion.
"I would predict that Indiana officials will eventually come down on folks who are smoking pot in this church," Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Virginia, wrote to me in an email, "and that the Indiana RFRA will not provide them with a defense."
