Category: Church of Cognizance

Dan and Mary Quaintance in 1991 founded the Church of Cognizance, organized around the principle that marijuana is a deity and a sacrament.

A federal district court in New Mexico found that the couple’s beliefs were not religious and added that they failed to show that those beliefs were sincerely held.

On appeal, a unanimous three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on May 19 affirmed the denial of the couple’s RFRA defense in United States v. Quaintance.

A man isn’t entitled to use Arizona’s religious-freedom law to overturn his conviction for possessing marijuana while driving, the state Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

The unanimous ruling rejected Danny Ray Hardesty‘s argument that he was entitled to use the same defense 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.

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

The founders of an Arizona church that deifies marijuana have pleaded guilty to two criminal charges and are now each facing up to 20 years in prison.

But Dan and Mary Quaintance , founders of the Church of Cognizance, remain confident that they will not end up behind bars.

Dan Quaintance believes freedom of religion will prevail, and predicts the case could go as far as the U.S. Supreme Court.

There is no religious right in Arizona to possess marijuana, the state Court of Appeals ruled Thursday, saying freedom of religion is not the same as freedom of action.

The judges rejected arguments that the First Amendment protections of free exercise of religion entitle an Arizona resident, Daniel Hardesty, to use marijuana as a “sacrament” of his church.

The criminal-trial date for the founders of a Southeastern Arizona church that deifies marijuana has been rescheduled for Feb. 20 in Albuquerque.

Founders of the Pima-based Church of Cognizance are scheduled to go to trial in January after a federal judge ruled against their assertion that their marijuana usage is tied to religious practices.

A U.S. judge is scheduled to decide if Dan and Mary Quaintance are drug dealers or church leaders with a national following.