Should ayahuasca be made legal? A N.S. religious freedom case tests that argument [Video]

The first sign that something was off was the sound of truck doors being slammed outside, a puzzling break to the peace inside the yurt located down a long driveway in a wooded rural outstretch not far from the quaint town of Annapolis Royal, N.S.

Within moments, a ceremonial leader named Michael Adzich had been arrested, and police were inside the tent-like structure, leaving gobsmacked six women who were in the last hours of a three-day spiritual retreat.

“It felt so violating to our space,” Jennifer Wilson, who attended the November 2022 ceremony as a helper, told a Halifax court this week.

What RCMP officers found at the site, a tar-like substance located inside a freezer, is now at the heart of an unusual case this week in Nova Scotia Supreme Court, pitting what the federal government effectively deems to be an illegal drug against Adzich’s right to religious freedom.

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