NAME 'EM AND SHAMAN

Is this really what the misuse of drugs act 1971 was supposed to protect us from?

Peter Aziz, a 51 year old shaman from Devon, has just been banged up for fifteen months for leading an ayahuasca ceremony.

For those not in the know – ayahuasca is a traditional South American hallucinogen. It’s main active ingredient is DMT, a powerful hallucinogen that according to one SchNEWS reporter on the psychedelic frontline, “creates a powerful totally immersive out-of-body experience, with none of the confusion you’d associate with say acid, psilocybin or ketamine. Yes you vomit but as a cleansing moment at the end of the ritual.” It is used throughout the Amazon region as a regular religious and healing tool.

Now not all of Peter’s claims (judging by his website) would stand up to scrutiny. But there is a small underground culture of ayahuasca use in the UK that will now have to run scared of the authorities for deciding what they want to put in their own bodies.

Anyone participating in a ceremony would know what to expect – despite the likes of the Mail claiming that Peter ‘spiked the sacred drink with class A drugs’ as if he’d been rumbled slipping a pill into the communion wine. In fact he was doing nothing secretly – which was his undoing.

Disgracefully it was the BBC who put someone in the ceremony as an infiltrator and reported him to the cops.

Who says the witch trials are consigned to history?