Are psychedelics actually medicine?: Prohibitionists

This time it’s different

Purdue told us OxyContin was safe. Merck told us Vioxx was safe. Theranos told us a finger-prick could replace a lab. In each case, the evidence was promising, the enthusiasm genuine, the financial incentives enormous. Now a coalition of researchers, investors, and wellness entrepreneurs tells us Schedule I psychedelics should be reclassified as medicines.

The phrase they use most: This time it’s different. It is always different. The trajectory — early promise, commercial capture, widespread harm — is always the same.

We do not dispute the trial data. We dispute the inference. Dramatic results in fifty carefully screened patients supervised by doctoral clinicians in a research hospital do not tell you what happens when the compound reaches the general population through a commercialized system optimized for throughput.

120 hours

Oregon’s Measure 109 licensed facilitators with as little as 120 hours of training. A licensed massage therapist requires 625 hours. A barber requires 1,350. The state decided that administering a compound that dissolves the ego requires less training than cutting hair.

The tradition holders understand what the clinical world does not: these compounds amplify whatever is present. Indigenous ceremonial use embedded the compound in a container refined over centuries. The clinical world is building that container from scratch using manualized protocols and 120-hour training. We agree it will not work.

Where we concede ground: Schedule I classification blocked legitimate research for fifty years. Nixon’s war targeted the counterculture, not evidence.

What would change our mind: Ten years of post-rescheduling surveillance showing no increase in psychedelic-related ER presentations.

Read the full synthesis: Are psychedelics actually medicine?