- Psychedelic drugs are extremely potent medicines that are currently illegal
- For a multitude of reasons, it is the high degree of safety with these drugs that will be the key to normalizing drug laws
A
global Mental Health Crisis is
spiraling out of control. Psychedelic drugs (and psychedelic medicine) are literally
the only hope in addressing this crisis.
For this important reason, most of the attention on psychedelic drugs has focused on their
amazing efficacy in treating a variety of mental health disorders. However, as the Psychedelics Revolution unfolds, it is arguably the safety of these drugs that is primarily powering this Revolution.
50 years of drug Prohibition In the 1950s and 1960s, research on the medicinal potential of several psychedelic drugs was well underway. Then, in the late 1960s, psychedelics ‘guru’ Timothy Leary issued his infamous exhortation: “tune in, turn on, drop out.”
This was too much for the political Establishment. Led by the United States, psychedelics and other “recreational” drugs were heavily criminalized, in what would become the greatest law-and-order failure in human history – the War on Drugs.
We continue to see the repercussions from this failed War, even as drug-phobic governments reluctantly begin to normalize these drugs.
- A Mental Health Crisis: two billion treatable (but untreated) mental health disorders leading to 8 million preventable deaths per year
- Putting a trillion-dollar-per-year industry in the hands of Organized Crime
- Rampant social problems directly caused by illegal drug use and/or drug-related crime
- Grossly excessive incarceration rates (especially in the U.S.)
- A major component of racial injustice in the United States