For inquiries regarding the utilization of ethnobotanicals, or in case you are experiencing an adverse situation or difficulty integrating and experience, please read this page. For inquiries regarding legal support , please read this page.
We are an expert resource for legal clarity and protection. Thanks to support from the international community, we’ve worked with over 100 defendants and their legal teams in 27 countries. We’ve educated judges, lawyers, ambassadors, diplomats, government officials with results. Our work is supported by a Steering Committee and Expert Committees made up of drug policy experts, lawyers, legal strategists and renowned academics.
We are dedicated to addressing the challenges presented by the growing criminalization of practices with ayahuasca and other teacher plants. We engage with policy makers, law enforcement authorities and all relevant actors to work towards sensible, human-rights based public policy.
The ICEERS Ayahuasca Defense Fund (ADF) helps people who have been arrested by uniting state-of-the-art legal, scientific, community, and public policy expertise. In addition to providing educational information to prevent legal incidents, we promote best practices and sensible policy that respects indigenous cultural heritage and human rights.
The Ayahuasca Defense Fund (ADF) is a program of ICEERS that unites state-of-the-art legal, scientific, community, and public policy expertise to shape a world in which ayahuasca and other traditional psychoactive plants can be used legally and safely. Through the ADF we serve the community by working with defendants worldwide, providing reliable expert information and promoting sensible public policy.
An acquittal was given in Mexico City in the trial of Don Jose Campos, a 64-year-old indigenous healer from the Peruvian Amazon who was arrested and imprisoned in March of 2022 for traveling with ayahuasca.
Psilocybin mushrooms are explicitly included in Schedule 1 of prohibited psychotropic substances in Mexico, characterized as those with scant or no therapeutic value and posing a serious threat to public health despite the country being the origin of their medicinal applications, from which their application has spread worldwide.
ICEERS has just released a full-length report on the legal status of ayahuasca in the Netherlands. The report was written by Adèle van der Plas, a lawyer who has been advocating for the rights of religious groups to work with ayahuasca in the Netherlands since 1994.
A new report Coca Leaf in Court: Cultural Rights and the Toxicological Labyrinth published by Constanza Sánchez, Dr. José Carlos Bouso, Pien Metaal, and Roberto Castro highlights the concerns with how coca cases are addressed in Spain, and the precedence this sets in other parts of the world.
At the national levels there is a widespread divergence of interpretation of how international legal frameworks should be to ayahuasca. In order to avoid risks, it is important to know the specific legal situation of each country.
Technical Reports
26 pages with all the latest research-based facts about ayahuasca, its uses, pharmacology, legal status and therapeutic effects, signed by 11 world-class experts and researchers.
Annual Reports
The ADF has been assisting defendants involved in legal cases around the world since 2010. These are our annual reports.
Studies and Papers
Our studies generate useful evidence in order to work towards sensible, human-rights based public policy.
