LOS ANGELES - The Pentagon is to allow 9,200 American Indians in the military to use peyote, the hallucinogen cactus of the south west and Mexico that induces a trance like state.
But it would be permitted only for religious purposes, and forbidden on ships and in aircraft. Participants would have to notify their commander when they finished ceremonies to ensure they did not risk any lives, including their own, while still under its influence. It stays in the body for 12 hours.
Peyote, which contains mescaline and was popularised among non-Indians by the late British author Aldous Huxley in the 1950s when he lived in California, has been used by American and Mexican Indians for 10,000 years. It is a sacrament in the Native American Church, which has 250,000 members.