Bonus: The Political Route to Legalising Psychedelics

Truffle Talk #3

The political route to legalising psychedelics.

In this edition, we’re going to look at the second way in which psychedelics are being legalised in the USA:

• Previous edition - the clinical route

• This edition - the political route

The political route is the ‘decriminalisation’ or ‘legalisation’ of certain psychedelics by local or national governments.

Let’s start by defining these terms.

Decriminalisation vs legalisation:

Decriminalisation is what has occurred in cities like San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

In these cities, the personal use of psychedelics is unlikely to be prosecuted, but the sale of psychedelics may be.

Legalisation is what has occurred in Oregon and Colorado.

These states have not only decriminalised personal psychedelic use, but have explicitly legalised the use of psilocybin when supervised by a registered guide, on licensed premises.

Why we prefer it:

We prefer this model because while it is currently still very expensive (around $3000 per treatment), it doesn’t have to stay that way.

Without the restrictions imposed by insurance companies and the FDA, costs could be reduced by:

• providing group psychedelic therapy rather than 1-on-1

• using nurses or social care workers for trip supervision rather than medical doctors

• providing preparation and integration therapy remotely, rather than in-person

• providing the entire psychedelic therapy experience remotely, like Mindbloom does with Ketamine

• combining psilocybin with other compounds to reduce the risk of negative experiences, which could in turn reduce the requirement for therapist supervision

An estimated 1 billion people suffer from a mental health condition worldwide. This is too large a number to be served through the world’s hospitals and clinics, which are for the most part overwhelmed already.

We need a scalable, community-centred approach to delivering psychedelic therapy. We believe that the legal frameworks of Oregon and Colorado, while currently far from perfect, could still become the template for a more equitable, non-clinical model of psychedelic therapy.

That’s it for this bonus web-only edition of Truffle Talk. If you have any feedback or questions, send me an email at [email protected].