Background: the broader drug policy context The legal status in which ayahuasca finds itself nowadays is not easy to comprehend, either for users, lawyers, authorities, or academics, and must be understood in the broader context of the international framework intended to control narcotics and psychotropics. The production, consumption, and trade of psychoactive substances has been a constant in the history of humankind and has played an important spiritual, social, economic, and political role in most societies and at all times (Schultes & Hofmann, 1979); the uses, social perceptions, and political approaches toward them have changed over time among different social contexts (Escohotado, 2008). Pleasure, individual freedom, health, morality, and even state reasons (Astorga, 1996) have been invoked when determining the level of social control, political intervention, or legal approach regarding their consumption, production, and trade.