Tucson, Arizona
The North American Association of Visionary Churches (NAAVC) will be hosting the conference with primary venues in Tucson, Arizona. Speakers will cover an array of topics including: the latest in western-medical research, perspectives on the Amazonian pharmacopeia and plant dietas, ground-breaking legal cases, best practices for ayahuasca churches, scholarly examination of the religious basis for visionary churches, meditation, spiritual and religious integration practices, Maloka building in North America, and the music and poetry of Amazonian icaros.
Venues and onsite locations:
Venue locations in Tucson will be announced shortly.
We look forward to seeing you there!
Featured Speakers
Charles Hernan Carreon, JD has been advising the NAAVC as legal counsel since 2016 and General Counsel since 2018. He earned his JD degree from UCLA School of Law in 1986. He was admitted to the State Bar of California in 1987, and the Oregon State Bar in 1993. He was admitted to the bar for the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 1987, the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon in 1995, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 2009. Carreon has been widely publicized for directing the legal team that successfully litigated the Sex.com domain-name property-rights case. Carreon was the first attorney to successfully litigate domain names as property, eventually earning a $65 million judgement in 2001. Today, having spearheaded the NAAVC legal effort against the DEA, Carreon holds a vertical expertise in psychedelics law relative to court ruling and opinion on enforcement action, RFRA, administrative law, national policy doctrines, and DEA oversight and regulation.
Jonathan Goldman, M. Ac. is the Founder and Director of the Santo Daime based Church of the Holy Light of the Queen in Ashland Oregon. Following a raid of his church in 1999 by the DEA, he brought a successful Federal lawsuit against the agency, prevailing by 2009 to ensure DEA exempted use of ayahuasca for his congregation. He has been teaching and practicing acupuncture, energy medicine, and spiritual healing for 40 years. Jonathan is the author of Gift of The Body, a distinctive work on energy anatomy, spiritual healing, and the application of The Chakra Map in our daily lives and energy field. Jonathan continues to work in his private practice in Ashland Oregon, offering Transformational Energy Healing and Acupuncture both in person and long distance with clients worldwide.
Paulo Cesar Ribeiro Barbosa, Ph.D. received his Medical Sciences degree at Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP) in 2008 working on a follow-up evaluation of religious ayahuasca users. He obtained his B.A. in Social Sciences at Universidade de São Paulo (USP) in 1992. Since 2001, he has worked on a variety of projects involving psychiatric, psychological, neurocognitive, social and cultural assessments of ayahuasca users within Brazilian urban contexts. Dr. Barbosa was appointed Professor of Scientific Methods in 2002 in the Departamento de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas at Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz, Brazil, and is currently doing post-doctoral studies at the Psychiatry Department of the University of New Mexico. Dr. Barbosa’s main research interests and activities concern the relationships among psychiatric, psychological, and anthropological methods of evaluating the effects of ayahuasca in Brazilian urban settings.
Hirsh Jain, JD sits on the board for the NAAVC and NORML A graduate of UC Berkeley with a JD from Harvard Law School, Jain has been fighting for individual rights since his days at UC Berkely working in the Public Defender’s Officer defending students that were accused of cannabis violations by the University. His work at Harvard Law focused on the legal architecture and social impacts of The War on Drugs. After a time representing the tech industry, he turned his focus back to the cannabis industry in 2018 as the West Coast Director of Government Affairs for MedMen, a Los-Angeles based cannabis retailer. He went on to work for Caliva, a San Jose-based cannabis brand, as its Director of Government Affairs. Hirsh serves on the Board of Los Angeles NORML In January 2021, he left Caliva and founded his own consulting firm, Ananda Strategy, which serves California cannabis operators across the supply chain and assists equity operators. Jain has interest in the field of psychedelics as an emergent gray industry showing promise in research and treatment, much as the cannabis industry has progressed before it.
Brad Bartlett, JD has enjoyed a long, successful career as a litigator, legal and policy advisor, and professor and lecturer at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. Brad has over two decades of experience working in the areas of environmental and American Indian law, and currently enjoys a sizable legal practice in the medical, cannabis and psychedelic legal arenas. In the psychedelic arena, Brad represents the Netflix film production team adapting Michael Pollan’s bestseller How to Change Your Mind as well as numerous doctors, therapists and clinics developing cutting edge ketamine and cannabis assisted therapies — including the Psychedelic Research and Training Institute, The Center for Medicinal Mindfulness, and Reconscious Medical. In the cannabis arena, Brad previously served as senior counsel at a prominent cannabis business law firm in Denver, Colorado that pioneered legal strategies for the industry. Brad currently works on a full suite of cannabis business and regulatory matters including federal (e.g. FDA and DEA) licensing, as well as conducting federal court litigation related to this emerging, and ever changing, area of law and policy.
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