Canada offers a working alternative. Since 2017, at least six organisations have received legal exemptions to import and use ayahuasca under Section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. The crucial provision: the Canadian minister of health may grant exemptions, on a discretionary, case-by-case basis, not only for medical or scientific purposes, but when this is "otherwise in the public interest." That final ground is deliberately broad — it does not limit exemptions to religious use, but allows the minister to consider any context in which regulated access serves the public good.
The first exemption, granted to Céu do Montréal in 2017, was for a religious organisation. But the conditions Health Canada attached are not religion-specific. They are safety standards: qualified leadership, participant screening for health and medication contraindications, a registered supply chain, transport and storage protocols following government guidelines, and safeguards to prevent the brew from being used outside its authorised context. These conditions directly address every concern the Amsterdam Court of Appeal raised in 2018.
It is worth stating plainly what makes regulation necessary. Ayahuasca is not risk-free. The brew contains MAO inhibitors that interact dangerously with common medications including antidepressants. Psychological risks are real, particularly for people with a history of psychosis or severe psychiatric conditions. Unqualified facilitators, absent screening, unsafe settings, and the absence of aftercare have caused real harm in unregulated contexts. These are not arguments against ayahuasca. They are arguments against the absence of standards. Precisely because the brew is powerful and not without risk, a grey zone in which no enforceable safety requirements exist serves no one — not participants, not practitioners, and not public health.
André van der Braak, professor at VU Amsterdam, examined the Canadian model in a 2020 analysis and noted that the Dutch Opium Act has a structurally similar ministerial exemption system. The critical difference: the Netherlands' grounds for exemption are a fixed, closed list — public health, scientific research, instructional purposes, and cannabis cultivation. There is no open "public interest" ground. Any use that falls outside these categories cannot be regulated, even if the minister would consider it appropriate.
Legal scholars have noted that the gap could be closed by broadening the grounds in Article 8 of the Opium Act to include something comparable to the Canadian "public interest" provision. The existing powers in Article 8a already allow the minister to attach detailed conditions to any exemption. The legal infrastructure, in other words, is already in place. What is missing is the ground on which to use it.
This is not a new argument. Prof. H.J.B. Sackers at Radboud University argued as early as 2007 that the Opium Act's exemption system should be expanded. His original suggestion was specifically for religious purposes, but the logic applies more broadly. A "public interest" ground would encompass religious, ceremonial, therapeutic, and other contexts without forcing the legislature to define or favour any one of them — and without reopening the politically sensitive question of which practices qualify as genuinely religious.