Biography/Memoir

Capitalism goes rogue with patent claims on psychedelics

Neither Ekaterina Malievskaia (of COMPASS) nor Christian Angermayer (of ATAI) have succeeded so far in convincing other actors in the psychedelic field that Compass has not put its commercial interests and revenue projections before public health benefits and research freedom. This why Rick Doblin (of MAPS) reacted by tweeting: “Attempts to patent therapeutic methods invented…

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Medicine/Healing

Treat drug use as a health issue, not a criminal one: decriminalize paraphernalia [& decriminalize/legalize drugs in parallel]

Over the past decade, nearly half a million people in the United States have died from a preventable drug overdose. At least 11 states have decriminalized drug paraphernalia for personal use. In December, D.C. joined this group. The D.C. law also expanded the kinds of paraphernalia that community organizations can distribute, allowing them to provide…

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Politics

The war on drugs didn’t work…

Broadly speaking, the status quo isn’t working. By 2019, the federal government was spending $34.6 billion annually on attempts to control drug use. More than $1 trillion has been directly spent on war on drugs initiatives in the past four decades… A 2018 study published in the journal Science found that overdose death rates have…

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Spirituality

Psychedelic… religious freedom…

…the violation of religious freedoms pertaining to sacramental psychedelic usage is hardly a rarity for… [entheogenic] religious groups… Indeed, it is both a first amendment right for U.S. citizens and a specifically cited right in the New Hampshire constitution [which] has upended Mack’s 2018 conviction, and therefore, ruled in favor of religious freedom to use…

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Anthropology

Psychedelic [social sharing Senate bill]

…would amend the state criminal code to specifically permit both the cultivation and distribution of certain psychedelics… the bill allows “social sharing” of psilocybin mushrooms, LSD, ibogaine, MDMA, mescaline, and DMT. Social sharing” is defined as the “giving away” or “consensual administering… not for financial gain.” The bill also declares that the “planting, cultivating, harvesting,…

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Biography/Memoir

How psychedelic drugs are used as a tool of state [and corporate] violence

The strategic architecture behind this renaissance has been, in large part, built on alliances with military, [corporate,] and law enforcement at various levels, [including for-profit corporations utilizing non-disclosures agreements to silence free speech]. A psychedelic substance with powerful dissociative effects, ketamine has been promoted as a template for psychedelic therapy and is also increasingly used…

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Biography/Memoir

…psychedelic gold…

That medical science has made these recent clinical breakthroughs doesn’t seem to matter where the law is concerned; the legitimacy lent by these scientific findings are not reflected in the current legal and enforcement landscape. Many psychedelics remain categorized under Schedule I of the DEA’s Controlled Substances Act, meaning that, among other supposed dangers, they…

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