Politics

Toronto won’t shut down magic mushroom dispensary but police might

…the regional district manager of Shroomyz called the company’s operations a “medical protest.” While Toronto previously used bylaws to target unlicensed cannabis dispensaries, though one chain has found a way to avoid being shut down, it doesn’t appear the city will target Shroomyz in the same way. After being formally denied a meeting, the delegation plans to hold…

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Medicine/Healing

…magic mushroom dispensary…

The city says it has no plans to use its powers to shut down Toronto’s only magic mushroom dispensary after a Toronto police raid earlier this month, leaving the shop still operating in a kind of grey area. CBC Toronto also reached out to Toronto’s Board of Health, which has been vocal in support of decriminalizing…

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Biography/Memoir

…on the leading edge of a ‘shroom boom

Long-time drug reform advocate Dana Larsen… was at the forefront of cannabis activism. “Vancouver had a convergence of activism in the 1990s,” he says. Legal cannabis activism, alongside drug user liberation groups like VANDU (Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users), helped to shift the local climate from one where bong shops were raided to one…

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Biography/Memoir

…launch of…

…recalls his postdoc years, when his father advised him that psychedelic medicine would be “the kiss of death” for his career. Around 2016, however, there was a major shift around findings showing profound antidepressant and anxiolytic effects among people with advanced stage cancer… another tipping point was the publication of Michael Pollan’s book How to Change…

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Medicine/Healing

Psychedelics delegation will confront… health ministers…

Cannabis and psychedelics specialist lawyer Paul Lewin explained to CBC News that the general sense is that the law is outdated and Shroomyz is “filling a void” for a medical need.  Toronto police recently raided the city’s first magic mushroom dispensary, Shroomyz. The store has reopened since, and the city is apparently not planning to shut it down even though it does not…

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Politics

Move to decriminalize LSD in Berkeley under discussion

A project to decriminalize natural psychedelics that lingered for three years in the Berkeley City Council will come back to life in a few weeks. But unlike other jurisdictions that have taken steps to chip away at the national and state ban on psychedelics, Berkeley is about to consider an even broader proposal: one that could make it…

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Politics

Oregon psilocybin emails show secret data collection plans

I received a batch of emails from the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) in response to a public records request… sheds light on the secretive OPEN Project (the Oregon Psilocybin Evaluation Nexus), which aims to collect detailed information on the psychedelic experiences of all psilocybin clients in Oregon. Emails show that Todd Korthuis, M.D., M.P.H. plans…

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Biography/Memoir

Oregon… mass pardons…

Kate Brown’s pardons will remove 47,144 convictions for simple possession of marijuana from individual records. Following the pardon, the Oregon Judicial Department will ensure that all related court records are sealed as required by law, according to the governor’s office… the pardoned marijuana convictions will no longer show up on background checks of public court…

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Biography/Memoir

…psychedelic surge

“I am an advocate for psychedelics. I can’t help it,” explains 57-year-old Jacqueline Lopez, “I mean, it wasn’t that long ago that I thought to myself, ‘What are you thinking, Jackie? These are Schedule I drugs. You can’t just go around talking about them.’ But the science behind it is superb and I had seen…

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Politics

History has been made…

“History has been made this week. We proved to the world it’s possible to pass a ballot measure that not only provides access to natural psychedelic-assisted therapy in a responsible state-regulated… …setting but also protects individual and community-based healing modalities from arrest and many civil offenses,” Joshua Kappel, the author of Prop 122, said in…

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