More than 60 people signed up to testify at the well-attended Oakland hearing. The City Council’s Public Safety Committee voted—with three ayes and one abstention—to advance to the full Council a measure that would declare enforcement of laws prohibiting the possession of “entheogenic plants” among adults the “lowest priority” for police … “These medicines are safe,” said…
Oakland, Calif., could become the second city in the U.S. to decriminalize certain natural hallucinogenics, including “magic mushrooms. The resolution applies only to psychedelics derived from plants or fungi, not synthetic drugs like LSD or MDMA. Original Article (The Hill):Oakland could become 2nd U.S. city to decriminalize hallucinogenic mushroomsArtwork Fair Use: Bob Embleton
Throughout history and to this day, treatment itself has often meant punishment. Without a careful interrogation of what we mean by “treatment” and the history of coercion, criminal justice reforms will be reforms in name only. Drug courts, which coerce people into treatment under threat of criminal punishment, continue to expand nationally. But three decades…
Now, several research groups… are trying to gather some… data on what, if anything, microdosing actually does. Up to now, however, most evidence for microdosing is purely anecdotal or based on surveys and self-reporting … as they wait to complete their data collection and analyses, the microdosing researchers currently running studies say they are not…
To be clear, shrooms will not be fully legal here. They will be treated the way marijuana was in Denver after decriminalization in 2005: city cops’ and the district attorney’s “lowest law enforcement priority.” The new ordnance specifies that no city funds are to be used to jail, arrest or even ticket someone for possession…
[In some parts of the world], psilocybin is not only decriminalized but fully legal, taxed by the government, and sold in dozens of retail stores across the country. Both [cannabis and psilocybin] have found a path to acceptance through the efforts of medicalization, as mainstream society has shown support for natural substances with demonstrable healing…
“Why are we putting individuals in prison and taking away their children for using something that is physically safe, non-addictive, and has such tremendous medical benefit?” the arguments-in-favor section reads. “Psilocybin mushrooms are safer than cannabis and alcohol. Not only are they non-addictive, but they also treat depression, addiction, and end-of-life anxiety.” Shall the voters…
…toxicology tests determined that other drugs were present [in recent deaths attributed to “kratom”]. Fentanyl, the powerful opioid, was listed as a cause of death in just over half of them. Other prescription opioids, heroin and benzodiazepines like Valium were each listed as a cause of death in about a quarter of those 91 fatalities.…
Caught in the conflict are thousands of chronically or fatally ill patients, many of whom are in pain and unsure where their next medicine will come from. Around 5,000 patients have already run out of their medicine, and an additional 3,000-4,000 will likely run out next week, according to Dana Bar-On, the CEO of the…
…[the] study has finally been approved by ethics committees and state and federal authorities, and will see a number of terminally ill patients being given a single dose of synthetic psilocybin—the psychoactive ingredient in mushrooms—under the supervision and guidance of psychiatrists to help them come to terms with their own mortality. Dr Margaret Ross [says],…
