Peyote as Commodity: An Examination of Market Actors and Access Mechanisms

Abstract

Access to the peyote cactus, a religious sacrament of the Native American Church (NAC), has been regulated by the federal government and the state of Texas since the 1960s. Over the last forty years, the number of licensed distributors has declined, a trend accompanied by rising prices and a diminishing market supply of the psychoactive cactus. Distributors are recognized as the primary NAC peyote source; consequently, their disappearance would be devastating for the 250,000-plus adherents of this distinctive indigenous tradition. Based on interviews with current and former peyote distributors, peyote pickers, landowners, and NAC members, a map of the various commodity chains that make up the peyote supply network is constructed. This research applies Access Mapping and Access Analysis of the supply network to identify the primary factors driving the decline of the regulated peyote trade. Focusing on the distributors' and NAC members' rights-based, structural, and relational access mechanisms, avenues for increasing access are identified, including amendment of distributor licensing fees.

DENSITIES, PLANT SIZES, AND SPATIAL DISTRIBUTIONS OF SIX WILD POPULATIONS OFLOPHOPHORA WILLIAMSII(CACTACEAE) IN TEXAS, U.S.A

“…Data on peyote sales from licensed distributors, collected by the TxDPS up until 2016, indicates that about 1,500,000 peyote buttons are sold annually (S5 Fig). A typical NAC ceremony requires about 300 buttons (Feeney 2017), and the membership of the NAC, is estimated at about 250,000 – 600,000 members (Prue 2014). Legal supply is struggling to satisfy demand, to an extent that in 1995 NAC leaders declared a ‘peyote crisis’ [44].…”

“…The geographical scope of the present study is South Texas (STx), where most of the commercial harvesting of peyote occurs, and Trans-Pecos or West Texas (WTx, area of Texas west of Pecos river), where no commercial harvesting occurs because peyote is much harder to find [34]. There are no published data on the population densities and/or structures for Lophophora williamsii across its native range.…”

La funcionalidad política de la “ciencia” prohibicionista: El caso del cannabis y los psicodélicos

“…Otro tanto sucede con los usos del peyote por parte de la Iglesia Nativa Americana. Las disputas y controversias en torno a los procesos de regulación del peyote en EEUU están en pleno vigor e involucran, en buena medida, aspectos constitucionales internos y debates en torno a libertades religiosas, igualdades de trato ante la ley, redefiniciones étnico-raciales, sustentabilidad del peyote y mercados, entre otras (26,27,102) .…”