This archive report was first published on 10 May 2021.
Published on May 10, 2021, a significant shift is underway in the way the US views psychedelics. Even some Republicans, traditionally opposed to liberalizing drug laws, are starting to come around.
Last month, former Texas Governor Rick Perry called on his state's legislators to support a Democratic-sponsored bill that would establish a psilocybin study for patients with PTSD, citing the high rates of suicide among war veterans.
Kevin Matthews, a psilocybin advocate who led Denver's successful ballot measure, noted, 'We've had 50 years of government propaganda around these substances, and thanks to the research and a grass-roots movement, that narrative is changing.'
Decades in the Wilderness ¶
Long before Nancy Reagan's 'Just Say No' campaign and President Richard Nixon's warnings about Timothy Leary, researchers like William A. Richards were using psychedelics to help alcoholics and cancer patients cope with anxiety.
Dr. Richards, a psychologist at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, was among scores of scientists studying the therapeutic potential of entheogens in the 1960s. Many early volunteers reported that the psychedelic sessions were the most important and meaningful experiences of their lives.
However, as the drugs left the lab and were embraced by the counterculture movement, the country's political establishment reacted with alarm. By 1985, funding for psychedelic research had largely disappeared, and the DEA issued an emergency ban on MDMA.
Dr. Richards, now 80 and a researcher at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, reflected on the lost opportunities, saying, 'We were learning so much, and then it all came to an end.'
Today, the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins, established two years ago with $17 million in private funding, is studying psilocybin for smoking cessation, depression associated with Alzheimer's, and more spiritual explorations involving religious clergy.
