Medicine/Healing

Will [psilocybe mushroom] dispensaries become a thing…

In many cases, the legal cannabis industry has used alcohol and tobacco as their model for a legal market. In turn, it’s tempting for the coming psychedelic industry to use cannabis as theirs, but this approach might be just as flawed as the Controlled Substances Act which places fundamentally different substances in the same category……

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Medicine/Healing

…public housing tenants not allowed to partake

Margolin said threatening people with losing their homes for doing what others are allowed to do is cruel. “This is absolutely unequal and unfair protection of people”. -Bruce Margolin (an attorney and the director of the Los Angeles chapter of NORML, a national advocacy group striving to decriminalize marijuana across the country.) Margolin recounted several…

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Medicine/Healing

Veterans vouch for ayahuasca therapy

During his time in the military, he became heavily reliant on drugs: marijuana, alcohol, cocaine, psychedelics. “I just realized there’s never really, ever, a time for war,” he said. Grob extensively studied the psychological effects of ayahuasca in Brazil in the 1990s, focusing on the UniÃo Do Vegetal church, which uses ayahuasca on a regular…

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Medicine/Healing

Santa Cruz could decriminalize magic mushrooms

“It’s going to be the lowest priority for police officers, who possess, use, and cultivate these plants and fungi for adults’ personal use,” said Santa Cruz city Vice Mayor Justin Cummings. [a/v video transcript] The proposed resolution would declare the investigation and arrest of individuals involved with adult possession, use, or cultivation of psychoactive plants…

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Medicine/Healing

Decriminalize nature advocating for… healthy relationships with plants [and fungi].

Hurdles of legality in cannabis is an example for the psychedelic community to realize there doesn’t need to be some complex regulatory framework. Solely decriminalizing and allowing interactions with these plants and fungi to be more personal with home growth and local education structures will allow for non-criminal relationships with plants and fungi to develop.…

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Medicine/Healing

When harm reduction expansion stifles activism: A lesson from Europe

In most of Western Europe, as across the world, drug users are still stigmatized, still criminalized, still marginalized, still considered second-class citizens. This will not change without user-led advocacy. “Harm reduction interventions in the main in Western Europe are delivered either by national health services or by non-governmental agencies that focus on health interventions,” said Niamh…

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