March 6, 2025
The U.S. embassy in Lima, Peru, is warning Americans against a traditional psychedelic known as ayahuasca, cautioning that the mixture “is a psychoactive substance containing dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a strong hallucinogen that is illegal in the United States and many other countries.”
Officials argued that using ayahuasca or kambo—a psychoactive substance derived from some frogs—can cause negative health effects and increase risks of sexual assault, robbery and other hazards.
“These dangerous substances are often marketed to travelers in Peru as ‘ceremonial’ or ‘spiritual cleansers,'” embassy officials wrote in a late January health alert to U.S. citizens, adding: “Facilities or groups offering ayahuasca/kambo are not regulated by the Peruvian government and may not follow health and safety laws or practices.”
As for ayahuasca—a mixture of botanical ingredients that contains DMT—the alert says the substance “can cause several negative health effects, including nausea, vomiting, increased heart rate, and even death. Some of the long-term effects include psychosis, difficulty sleeping, neurological diseases, and ongoing hallucinations.”
“In 2024, several U.S. citizens died or experienced severe illness, including mental health episodes, following consumption of ayahuasca,” it continues. “These incidents often occur in remote areas near or within the Peruvian Amazon, far away from modern medical facilities. The limited connectivity and limited access to emergency services and hospitals increases the risks.”
The alert adds that “U.S. citizens in Peru have also recently reported being sexually assaulted, injured, or robbed while under the influence of these dangerous substances at ‘healing’ or ‘retreat’ centers.”
U.S. residents have been traveling to South American countries for years to access ayahuasca and other traditional psychedelics, which have been used medicinally for centuries. Researchers in 2019, for example, found a 1,000-year-old cache of mind-altering substances that included ingredients for ayahuasca.
Traveling abroad to use ayahuasca and other psychedelics has become popular among veterans suffering from PTSD and other mental health conditions—a trend Vivek Ramaswamy acknowledged during his 2024 Republican presidential campaign.
In late 2023, Ramaswamy said the U.S. government should remove restrictions on ayahuasca and MDMA, calling the reforms a “holistic approach” to high rates of substance abuse and suicide among veterans.
“Today, over 20 (and by some estimates, 40+) veterans die by suicide per day. This is wrong & un-American,” the GOP contender said in a social media post. “I support decriminalizing ayahuasca & ketamine for veterans suffering from PTSD, to prevent the epidemic of fentanyl & suicide.”
In April of last year, meanwhile, the federal government reached a settlement with an Arizona-based nonprofit to permit the group to import and use ayahuasca as a religious sacrament—an agreement leaders called a historic milestone for spiritual freedom.
Under the settlement announced by the Church of the the Eagle and the Condor (CEC), the group is permitted “to import, receive, manufacture, distribute, transport, securely store, and dispose of ayahuasca solely for CEC’s religious purposes.”
The agreement said the church would import ayahuasca, which contains the psychedelic substance DMT, “in concentrated paste or in liquid form” and then “combine the ayahuasca paste with water to manufacture ayahuasca tea for sacramental uses” at a location in Phoenix.
A month later, however, the Department of Justice called that settlement “irrelevant” in the case of a separate church in Iowa that sought to incorporate ayahuasca into its ceremonies.
Earlier in the year, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) called for the production of even more DMT—along with psilocybin and THC—for research purposes than it had initially proposed for 2024, raising quotas for those drugs while maintaining already high production goals for marijuana and psychedelics.
DEA repeated that call this past December, increasing the 2025 quota for the legal production of DMT in the U.S. The agency said at the time that it agreed with requests for the adjustment to “support legitimate research and scientific efforts” to develop a Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved drug based on the psychedelic.
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