I don't pretend to be an authority on the current legal status of ayahuasca in the United States, which is very uncertain at present. But here's a guess as to how it might turn out in the end. Ayahuasca is a tea which can be made with any combination of maybe half a dozen herbs, all of which are legal for now. But the herbs fall into two categories, antidepressant and hallucinogenic. My prediction is simply that the antidepressant herbs will be kept legal while the hallucinogenic ones will be banned. Antidepressants, OTC and RX, have a low abuse potential, and are about as addictive and/or hazardous as St. John's Wort, which is to say not very. The hallucinogenic component of the tea is probably what the authorities will look most unfavorably on. Yes, I know the arguments: you don't really "trip" with ayahuasca. You can make it with a lot, a little, or no hallucinogenic herbs (like chalapanga and chacruna). Actually, I almost always make it with kaapi by itself, pure antidepressant and no hallucinogenic; I drink it to help me, not to get high; there are other drugs for that. The tea as a whole doesn't have much value as a recreational substance, certainly not a party drug like, say, mushrooms or LSD, not to mention MDMA. Still, they do make you hallucinate, and we can't have that, can we? It doesn't make much sense, I know, but then again, very little about the drug war does.