Woman claims her religious beliefs as a Wiccan permit her a religious right to possess meth. Police disagree.
Throughout the world, many people have claimed that their religious beliefs allow them to do and not to do certain things that are expected of others. For some, this could be not going to work on a particular religious holiday. Some abstain from certain foods, and some engage in special journeys throughout the world that have a special religious meaning for them. But in a case that appears to be the first ever of its kind, there is now an individual that is claiming that she should be permitted to possess the drug meth, because of her religious beliefs as a Wiccan.
Meth is a drug that is banned in many countries around the world, and yet a woman named Lori Potarf, from the United States of America, has recently claimed that possessing and consuming meth – or methamphetamines – are a key part of her religious beliefs as a Wiccan. As a practising Wiccan, Lori argued, she should be permitted to live out her faith as she believes is right – and it would be against her human rights to prevent her from doing so.
It is not exactly clear how Lori Potarf has come to this conclusion, because there is not a centralized Wiccan text or international governing body that decides what is and what is not permitted for those who follow Wiccan. Instead, each individual who identifies with the Wiccan faith has significant say in how they are going to express their faith. That means that there are huge variations between Wiccans as to what they do. As far as our researchers can tell, no one else has previously claimed that meth is a key part of Wiccan beliefs or practices, and police officers who arrested Lori Potarf were not very sympathetic to her argument and arrested her anyway.