PROFIT (AND PERIL) IN BEING A LICENSED PEYOTE SELLER

MIRANDO CITY, Tex. - The South Texas sun beats on the landscape here like
an anvil, turkey vultures circle overhead and the scent of distant gas
wells drifts across desolate plains of mesquite chaparral and cactus. This
is harsh country, but also a land, some say, that offers spiritual
enlightenment.

To nearly 250,000 members of the Native American Church, the brush land
from Mirando City to the Rio Grande represents a kind of Eden: the only
place in the United States where peyote, a sacrament in their eyes, grows
in the wild.

"This is sacred ground to a lot of Native American tribes," said Salvador
Johnson, one of only six people licensed by the state and federal
governments to harvest peyote. "To some, the land here is very holy because
it is home to the sacred peyote."

Peyote, a small spineless cactus, also grows in the Sierra Madre Occidental
in Mexico, but its northern range in the United States extends to only a
few miles north of here. Thousands of American Indians make a pilgrimage
each year to Mirando City, 30 miles east of Laredo, in search of the bitter
peyote buttons that are eaten in religious ceremonies.

"The people around here have been trading peyote with the Indians for
hundreds of years, so this is nothing new to us," Mr. Johnson said. "We
can't cultivate it, that's against the law, but what God produces, we cut."

The cactus button, ranging from the size of a quarter to several inches
across, contains the powerful hallucinogenic drug mescaline. Although
peyote use is restricted by state law and the federal Controlled Substances
Act, there is rarely an enforcement issue locally, Mr. Johnson said.

"Most law enforcement agencies around Mirando know why the Native Americans
come to South Texas, and they just leave them alone," he said. "It's part
of the Indian culture, and they understand that."

William Glaspy, now a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration in
Washington who was once an agent in South Texas, said: "Federal law allows
Native Americans to possess peyote for their personal use in religious
ceremonies. If we found someone in possession of peyote in personal-use
quantities and they could prove that they were a Native American, we kicked
them loose."

Mr. Johnson, 55, has harvested peyote for more than 40 years, after
learning the trade from his father. At one time, 28 people were licensed in
Texas to collect the buttons, but time and the complexities of the business
have weeded out most harvesters, or peyoteros, he said.

"This is not a business that is easy," said Mr. Johnson, who supplements
his income by building houses. "It's not like going to the grocery store."

The problems of a peyotero, he said, include the difficulty of finding
ranches willing to lease their lands for harvesting, errant bullets from
hunters in deer season, rattlesnakes the size of logs and the continuing
flux of laws governing peyote.

Until last year, a buyer in Texas had to be at least 25 percent Native
American or a member of a tribe to buy the cactus legally. But after state
officials received requests involving unknown tribes, the Texas Department
of Public Safety began enforcing rules that permit only federally
recognized tribes to obtain peyote, said Tela Mange, a spokeswoman for the
agency.

The federal government recognizes only about 550 of at least 1,000 known
Indian tribes, Mr. Johnson said, and the law does not cover Canadian or
Mexican tribes.

"That's a shame, because those Canadians have been coming down here for
hundreds of years to pick or buy peyote," he said. "We can't sell to the
Canadian tribes until the law gets worked out." Mexican tribes can still
obtain the cactus from peyoteros there, he said.

Five other peyote harvesters are in nearby communities like Roma, but Mr.
Johnson says he is probably the largest legal dealer in Texas.

"I move between 300,000 to 500,000 buttons a year out of a total production
for the state of about two million buttons," he said.

Peyote is always in demand, he said, because it is central to some tribes'
religious ceremonies.

"To them, it is a way to get closer to their creator, to see what they call
'the clear light,' " Mr. Johnson said. "It's just a portion of their
religion, but it is key to their rituals. Their mission is not to get high
but to seek enlightenment."

Several mornings a week, Mr. Johnson picks the peyote buttons from leased
ranchland, then dries them for days behind his home on wooden racks
enclosed in a locked wire-mesh cage, according to federal regulations.

Today, his customers included a 74-year-old Navajo who had driven all night
from Shiprock, N.M., to Mirando City. After checking documents that
certified the man as a Native American, Mr. Johnson collected a bucketful
of buds and poured them into a burlap bag. He issued a receipt for the
peyote and collected $125. "That's all there is to it," he said of the
transaction.

"The rest is up to him," he added, as the man drove away.