Casey Hardison is an entheogenic activist, unauthorized researcher and psychedelic chemist who is best known for his indefatigable good mood and enormous energy. Casey attended entheogen-related conferences, wrote articles for the MAPS Bulletin, The Entheogen Review, and contributed to Erowid. After moving to Britain in 2002, Casey chose to fulfill a ten-year spiritual journey to make LSD, in part to make up for the drought caused by a major LSD bust in the United States. He was arrested and convicted of LSD, DMT, and 2C-B manufacture in Britain.

Casey acted as his own lawyer during his trial. Instead of arguing he did not commit the acts, he argued that--as long as he harmed no one--he had the human right to engage in his chosen entheogenic praxis. In essence, Casey challenged the drug laws as a discriminatory affront to free thought, therapeutic choice and free religion. The trial judge rejected these arguments and an eight-week trial ensued after which Casey was convicted on March 18, 2005 on 6 of 8 counts and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment on April 22, 2005. On appeal, Casey submitted substantially similar human rights arguments but these were rejected and his sentence upheld on May 25, 2006.

Casey then submitted his human rights arguments simultaneously to the European Court of Human Rights and to the House of Lords, the highest court of appeal in the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, this June 2006 appeal, though capturing the spirit of his perceived injustice, was not viewed as a proper legal argument but as an attack on policy.

In early 2007, the Secretary of State formally opposed Casey's request for Judicial Review and Casey replied in March 2007 (see Reply to Secretary of State's Defence CM 6941). Casey continued to work through the British justice system to question the legality of his imprisonment, filing an August 2009 appeal against conviction on the basis that new evidence shows prima facie that the UK Goverment administers the law arbitrarily, giving rise to the fundamental inequality of treatment he experiences. After serving his time, Casey was released from prison on May 29, 2013. Back in the United States, he remarked: "Freedom is Ace!"

More on Casey's legal arguments...