Olsen v. United States: Part I

Submitted by Carl Olsen

Publisher note: the unedited text submitted by TII subscriber C. Olsen is reprinted for readers in two parts, with the second part to be released with TII’s April 17, 2007 edition; in this “part 1,” Mr. Olsen gives both personal and historical background leading to his 2007 appeal of a federal marijuana conviction he received in 1982: Olsen v. United States, No. 1:07-cv-34, U.S. District Court, Portland, Maine. Reader response to any publication of The Independent Iowan should be directed to TheIndependentIowanArticles@Yahoo.COM.

I started drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes when I was in High School in the late 1960s. My first reaction when someone offered me a marijuana cigarette was absolute fear that I had just been invited into the gates of hell. After some friendly persuasion from a close friend, I tried it and liked it so well that I stopped drinking alcohol.

You may not remember those times, but it was the Vietnam War era. Although there was nothing called a Patriot Act at that time, it had not been so long since McCarthyism had spread the fear of being associated with Communism. Protesting the Vietnam War was akin to being labeled a Communist in earlier years and smoking pot became associated with this peace movement protesting the Vietnam War.

Several things happened at that time, but it was undoubtedly Dr. Timothy Leary that provoked the greatest fears. Dr. Leary began experimenting with psychedelic drugs and popularized them in the mainstream culture. Dr. Leary proclaimed himself to be a member of the League of Spiritual Discovery (LSD, which stands for the psychedelic drug lysergic acid diethylamide). In response, momentum began to build for a uniform controlled substance law.

Dr. Leary got arrested crossing into Mexico from the United States with a small quantity of marijuana and his case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1969. Dr. Leary claimed the marijuana was his sacrament, but he also claimed that the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act was unconstitutional because it required him to incriminate himself in violation of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The United States Supreme Court reversed his conviction, finding the federal marijuana law invalid because of the self incrimination issue. What the Supreme Court did not do was to review the ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit finding that the marijuana laws were too important to allow religious freedom to use marijuana as a sacrament. Leary v. United States , 383 F.2d 851 (5th Cir. 1967). Unfortunately, this lower court ruling became the law of the land in cases involving the sacramental use of marijuana for the next 35 years.

Left without a federal marijuana law and faced with the rising use of psychedelic drugs, Congress and the Nixon Administration began working on a comprehensive drug law which was to become known as the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. When the idea was expressed that marijuana should be included in the most restrictive category along with substances like LSD, there was concern that this might not be the right thing to do. To alleviate those concerns, Congress included in the new law a Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse to make a recommendation on the role of the federal government regarding this plant. It is interesting to note that marijuana was the only controversial piece of this new legislation and that it was so controversial that a Commission was authorized by the statute to review its inclusion.

In 1972, the Commission recommended that marijuana was not sufficiently dangerous to justify making it a crime. By that time, the damage was already done. Marijuana had already been illegal for 2 years and the Nixon Administration was not about to see it’s new law, giving it the authority to bust targeted members of the peace movement (or any other minority group it wanted to target), repealed. The findings of the Commission were ignored and the rest is history.

Adding to this absurdity, THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana and found in the majority of over the counter medicines in the United States prior to 1938, was found to have medical value in 1986 and moved to a less restrictive category. Marijuana, the plant containing THC, remained in the most restrictive category.

In 1988, the Chief Administrative Law Judge for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, found that, “Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.” Again, just as the federal Commission on Marihuana (which later became known as the Shafer Commission) was ignored, the Chief Administrative Law Judge for the DEA was also ignored and Congress did nothing to allow the medical use of marijuana.

In 1999, THC was again moved to an even less restrictive category because of its safety record, while the green, leafy marijuana plant remained in the most restrictive category along with drugs like methamphetamine and heroin. Since 1999, eleven states have passed laws allowing medical users to grow marijuana without fear of being arrested by state law enforcement authorities.

Olsen v. United States: part 2

By Carl Olsen

Publisher note: Carl Olsen’s story has been provided in two parts by TII; the first part was published April 11, 2007. Mr. Olsen cited a brief personal history leading to his conviction, now on appeal, for marijuana possession in connection with church affiliation. The story resonates for Iowans, in part, through its connection to what Olsen stated in Part 1 of his story as the "medicinal" value of the key substance, THC:

In 1988, the Chief Administrative Law Judge for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, found that, "Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man." (taken from Olsen v. United States - part 1)

One Presidential candidate and the ONLY candidate supported by the NRA, Governor Bill Richardson, signed significant legislation this Spring in support of "medical marijuana," also providing for state supply of the medicine for therapeutic purposes.

Mr. Olsen resumes, now, in part 2:

Getting back to my own personal story, I joined a religious organization in the 1970s which later became known as the Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church. The Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church was featured on 60 Minutes (CBS Television) in October of 1979, when thousands of people attended the opening ceremonies for our new church building in St. Thomas Parish, Jamaica. Members of the church had been arrested on numerous occasions with large amounts of marijuana and had been televised frequently using marijuana at the U.S. headquarters of the church in Miami, Florida.

I was arrested in 1980, along with 14 other members of the church, for unloading a boat with 20 tons of marijuana off the coast of Maine. At our trial, we informed the court that we intended to tell the jury that the marijuana was our religious sacrament. "On November 23, 1982, the district court ruled as a matter of law that the first amendment did not protect the possession of marijuana with intent to distribute by the defendants, and further ordered that the defendants be precluded from introducing at trial any evidence concerning the Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church and the use of marijuana by its members, insofar as such evidence related to their alleged first amendment defense." United States v. Rush, 738 F.2d 497, 512 (1st Cir. 1984). The trial court based its ruling on Dr. Timothy Leary’s case from 1967.

In 2006, the legal landscape changed when the Supreme Court ruled that the drug laws are not so important that they can override religious freedom without a hearing on the facts. Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal , 546 U.S. 418 (2006). The Supreme Court said the facts must show a threat to public health and safety sufficient to override religious freedom. And there you have it. The federal Commission authorized by the same federal statute that made marijuana illegal said there was no threat to public health and safety sufficient to justify making a criminal out of anyone. The review process authorized by the same federal statute that made marijuana illegal resulted in a ruling that "Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man." Eleven states have acknowledged that there is no threat to public health and safety sufficient to override a medical user’s right to manufacture marijuana for their own use.

O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal (UDV) is a Christian Spiritist sect based in Brazil, with an American branch of approximately 130 individuals. Central to the UDV’s faith is receiving communion through hoasca (pronounced "wass-ca"), a sacramental tea made from two plants unique to the Amazon region. One of the plants, psychotria viridis, contains dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a hallucinogen whose effects are enhanced by alkaloids from the other plant, banisteriopsis caapi. DMT, as well as "any material, compound, mixture, or preparation, which contains any quantity of [DMT]," is listed in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. § 812(c), Schedule I(c).

On March 3, 2007 I filed a petition to correct the trial court’s 1982 error in United States v. Rush . The Supreme Court has now recognized that trial courts cannot prevent defendants from presenting a religious defense based on sacramental use of controlled substances (the controlled substances have all been plants). My case is Olsen v. United States, No. 1:07-cv-34, U.S. District Court, Portland, Maine.

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