…patients battle to make psilocybin accessible…
DEA Administrator Anne Milgram did not respond to interview requests for this story. DEA spokesperson Katherine Pfaff wrote in a separate e-mail… that “we will respectfully decline this opportunity.” …the DEA issued a “standard knee-jerk response,” Tucker says… Thomas Prevoznik, a DEA deputy assistant administrator, wrote that the administration “has no authority to waive any of the [Controlled Substances Act’s] requirements.” Prevoznik did not respond to interview requests for this story.
Getting the DEA’s permission to administer psilocybin therapy for a cancer patient should have been straightforward, because there is nothing in state or federal law that excludes scheduled drugs from the Right to Try Act, says Kathryn Tucker a Portland, Ore.–based lawyer… a year and a half after first reaching out to the DEA… stuck in a frustrating holding pattern of bureaucratic delays…. went as far as to file a lawsuit against the DEA, but it was dismissed on a technicality. The agency has not yet issued a final decision that will permit… access psilocybin therapy or reopen their lawsuit… All three studies found that psilocybin therapy produced mood-elevating effects and that the benefits lasted weeks or even months following a single active-treatment session. “The sense of unfairness, punishment, helplessness and uncertainty is particularly extreme…” says [Matthew] Johnson, who co-authored the 2016 paper. “It helps a lot of people and not just trivially.”
Original Article (Scientific America):
Two cancer patients battle to make psilocybin accessible for palliative care
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