Bonus: The Clinical Route to Legalising Psychedelics

Truffle Talk - Bonus Web Edition

The clinical route to legalising psychedelics

In the next two bonus editions, we’re going to look at the two ways in which psychedelics are being legalised in the USA:

• This edition - the clinical route.

• Next edition - the political route

As a spoiler, we think the political approach is more promising. More on that in the next edition.

The clinical route:

For a drug to be legally sold in the USA, it must first pass through the lengthy approval process of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

It generally takes at least $1 billion and 10 years for a pharma company to take a drug through the FDA approval process.

The reward for this investment is a 20-year patent on the drug, during which time no other company can produce or sell it.

Why I don’t think it’ll work:

Pharma companies face 2 major issues when it comes to patenting a psychedelic drug:

1. Naturally-occurring psychedelics, like psilocybin, are already widely available (i.e. in mushroom form).

• As a result, any patent on psilocybin won’t actually prevent others from producing or selling it.

The implication: Psychedelic pharma companies may struggle to raise enough money from investors to bring a drug to market, due to their natural availability.

2. Unlike every other drug that the FDA has approved, psychedelics require a therapist to be present when they’re taken.

• This means that the minimum cost of psychedelic treatment will be very high.

  • Most drugs cost less than a dollar to produce, so pharma companies can set their prices low and still make a profit.

  • Therapy, on the other hand, costs $100-200 per hour. With the average psilocybin trip lasting 6 hours, that’s up to $1200 for trip supervision alone.

  • When combined with the hours of additional therapy required before and after the psychedelic experience, it’s clear that it’s going to be difficult to get insurance companies to cover psychedelic therapy.

The implication: Clinical psychedelic therapy will be too expensive for most people to afford.

That’s it for this bonus edition of Truffle Talk. If you have any feedback or questions, reply and let me know.

In the next edition:

We’ll go into the second way in which psychedelics are being legalised in the USA, the political route.