Misguided Efforts By some Native AMerican Groups to “Protect” Peyote will only further endanger it.

Peyote has the misfortune of growing in an area of the country where an infinitesimally small portion of the dominant culture have any respect, awareness or reverence for the native plants and native plant habitat. Peyote grows in a place where the dominant culture puts a higher value on cleared land than land with "brush" on it. Every year here countless acres of peyote habitat with hundreds of plants on them in Starr, Webb, Zapata and Jim Hogg County get bulldozed and cleared for agriculture, suburban housing, and cattle pasture (y’know, to graze cattle in what is effectively a desert). Meanwhile many native groups are claiming that it's poaching by non-natives that's driving peyote populations down, a notion which is completely absurd. Even more absurd is that some of these native groups want to weaponize racist drug laws that were created to persecute the native groups themselves in order to “protect” Lophophora williamsii - Peyote. They are asking the government to prosecute anybody growing or possessing peyote that doesn't have a tribal card. They want to prevent peyote from being decriminalized. Meanwhile, if peyote were decriminalized, it would be significantly easier to ease poaching pressures as well as restore Peyote populations by any conservation groups hoping to re-planting thousands of them into protected parcels of habitat. The fact that anyone would be against decriminalizing what is essentially a harmless plant that is on the verge of being wiped out from over 50% of its former habitat is insane.

Yet many native groups that value peyote as medicine and sacrament are still wasting valuable time and energy chasing a bogeyman that barely exists : psychedelic “entrepreneurs” and anglo peyote users that are supposedly jumping at the gills, lying in wait for peyote to be decriminalized so they can illegally trespass on private property in a state where nearly everyone who lives in rural areas is armed — just to be able to try eating a plant that causes severe stomach discomfort and potential vomitting in order to experience a high. Many native groups are wasting time chasing new age “honky shamans” (which yes, do exist, and are as ridiculous as they sound), while the real villain of habitat destruction, invasive species, a culture that has no respect for the native habitat whatsoever, and feral pigs (yes, they uproot and partially eat peyote) are destroying peyote plants on an exponential scale.

Crying bloody murder about non-natives supposedly demanding access to Peyote (a phenomenon I rarely see) while tens of thousands of plants and their habitat are lost every year to the kind of things pictured in the photographs below is a tragic and wasteful misplacing of grievance and culpability. Further, these native groups waste ample time begging the DEA to enforce existing drugs laws - drug laws that were themselves products of a racist culture war — demanding that a huge segment of the population not have access just to grow a plant that is legal in Canada and most of Europe. In both of those countries where peyote is legal to grow but illegal to ingest, there is not now nor ever has been a huge demand for this cactus in the drug trade or in psychedelic culture. Most people just don’t care or have the time to play psychonaut, not surprisingly. Further, anglo use of peyote can easily be discouraged via cultural encouragement alone without weaponizing absurd, failed drug laws. Salvia apiana, a plant held sacred by many Native Americans of the American Southwest, was at one point experiencing poaching pressures in California and Arizona from anglos due to the aromatic smell it produces when burned or smudged, but through cultural education and awareness, its poaching was discouraged, mostly through social media. Poaching pressures on this plant have now eased. Like peyote, Salvia apiana can be grown from seed, and dried bundles of leaves sold in overpriced health food stores now often come only from sources that have guaranteed that the leaves they sell come from plants that were grown sustainably, on farms. Further, the mere use of the plant by anglos has in many places been discouraged as a form of cultural appropriation. The same could easily be done with peyote. Poaching pressures and inappropriate use could be easily controlled for were Peyote ever legalized for horticultural production.

Instead of petitioning lawmakers to throw old ladies in jail for growing cacti that contain bitter but harmless alkaloids, these Native groups might be better off spending their energy lobbying to protect habitat, or for the right to grow it themselves and plant it out into "the gardens" of South Texas where it (and the dozen other rare cactus species it grows with) are currently being destroyed on an almost daily basis. Native groups could instead be buying up parcels of land with Peyote on it and learning to protect and steward the Thornscrub habitat that it grows on instead of fixating so hard on identity politics, and using archaic draconian drug laws that were originally created to persecute natives themselves. Peyote will also grow well in the ground in places like Southern Arizona. I have seen firsthand large colonies planted on O’odham reservations 30 years ago that today are thriving, an excellent form of in-situ conservation. Yet few people, if any, are doing this. Why?

I understand that as humans, the herd mentality among us is strong and it's easy to just go along with what others are doing. I also understand that finger-pointing is a much easier temptation than actually working hard to find a solution to a complex and tragic problem. I implore some of the native groups that today stand against decriminalizing or legalizing peyote cultivation to either begin to focus on restoration work, ex-situ conservation (conserving species outside of their native habitat) and habitat protection, or to start advocating for conservation groups to legally be able to work with this plant species in order to protect it, conserve it, and partially restore what has been lost. For too long native groups have said “the peyote will take care of itself”. As somebody who lives in the peyote gardens and is familiar with the habitat and all the species that grow here, I have seen firsthand that that is simply not true.

“Chaining” is a method by which a large ship-chain is dragged between two bulldozers to clear huge swaths of land of shrub and small-tree cover at once. It is commonly employed in the great basin, namely in Nevada and Idaho, but I saw it being done here in South Texas in the peyote gardens in March of 2023.