This year we organized the nomination of the peyote-using Huichols and the Cannabis Social Clubs for the NObel Peace Prize.

We conceive of the Nobel Peace Prize as "a means to give momentum to a set of causes", as Obama phrased it upon hearing he had been awarded the prize.

Our causes are the fostering of understanding for the use of mind-altering substances and the end of the war waged against them. These two causes are intrinsically linked to each other, because as long as society remains beholden to the idea that these substances are agents of evil, we would be foolish to expect the war against them to end.

By proposing persons for the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts in favor of a sociable,  ecologically friendly and peace promoting use of mind-altering substances, we don’t intend to underestimate similar efforts by other parties, or efforts for peace in other conflictual arenas. But we do believe that our candidates - the representatives of the Cannabis Social Clubs and the Wixárika people – have given us and continue to show us, an exemplary way to use and preserve the mind-altering medicines of nature for the spiritual and physical benefit of its individual users and society at large.
At a moment when cannabis threatens to become another commodity appreciated for its financial interests over and above its medicinal potency to engender spiritual rejuvenation and the health of its users, a moment also when the unique traditional use of peyote is endangered with extinction by all-devouring agricultural and mining industries, we did appeal for support for the Drugs Pacifists’ Candidacy for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, as a worthwhile and timely vehicle to claim for peace in an unjust and senseless war, and to help give momentum to the causes the candidates embody.

One can wonder about the efficacy of the Prize as a means, since people objected to Obama having gotten the Prize before having achieved anything significant to advance peace, or the fact that there has been talk about proposing presidents Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un for meeting each other in Singapore. But, one can also argue that these occurrences show how much store is still set by this Prize. That might change of course if the Oslo Nobel Committee would decide to give the award to the just mentioned politicians, but for now it is still a vehicle that bestows an aura of respectability on whomever is nominated for it.