Well, it was worth a try. There is apparently no religious defence in the U.S. for marijuana use. A man wasn’t entitled to use Arizona’s religious-freedom law to overturn his conviction for possessing marijuana while driving, the state Supreme Court in Phoenix ruled Tuesday. The unanimous ruling rejected Danny Ray Hardesty’s rather ingenious and inventive claim that he was entitled to use the same defence allowed for peyote use in Native American sacramental rites.

Hardesty said he belonged to a church whose main religious sacrament is allowing individual families to establish their own modes of worship. Who said religion was boring, eh?

“Hardesty’s mode was to smoke and eat marijuana without limit as to time or place,” the court opinion noted.

Along with claiming a state constitutional protection that the Supreme Court said it didn’t need to address, Hardesty sought to apply 1999 state law prohibiting government from “burdening a person’s exercise of religion except when there’s a compelling governmental interest and when government uses the least restrictive means.” Seems like a splendid libertarian argument to TheEye.

The justices said that it had already been established that concerns about public safety and health give the government a “compelling interest” in restricting marijuana use. And the court concluded that Hardesty’s claims that he has a right to use marijuana whenever he pleases, including while driving, means nothing less than a ban would suffice. Double-busted.

Oh well. Peace, brother…