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After Legal Win, What's Next for Magic Mushrooms?:
On August 4, Canada's Health Minister Patty Hajdu granted, by way of a Section 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, permission for four terminally-ill Canadians to consume psychedelic drugs. The decision comes after months of careful maneuvering by TheraPsil, a Canadian non-profit seeking to treat end-of-life distress with psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms.
Dr. Bruce Tobin, a B.C.-based psychotherapist and TheraPsil's founder and chair, called the decision a game-changer. "It will contribute a whole new class of pharmacological tools and resources to the profession," he said. "Those of us who have been veterans in the field of clinical psychology understand all too well that there's just a very wide range of patient cases that the state-of-the-art isn't up to treating very well."
While the current exemption applies only to the approved patients seeking treatment for end-of-life anxiety and depression, TheraPsil's ultimate goal is legalized clinical access to medical-grade psilocybin within Canada's existing public healthcare framework.
[...] So far, the most credible applications of psychedelic medicine appear in the therapeutic treatments foregrounded by groups like TheraPsil. In Oregon, voters will see statewide access to legalized psilocybin therapy as an item on the November ballot. The Yes On IP34 initiative is petitioning the Oregon Health Authority to create a licensing system that regulates the use of psilocybin by trained practitioners. The movement is spearheaded by Tom and Sheri Eckert, husband-and-wife therapists and founders of the Oregon Psilocybin Society. "Psilocybin therapy is not a panacea," says Sheri, "but it's pretty unique in its potential to address a spectrum of mental health issues like depression, anxiety, and some addictions."
(Score: 2) by Booga1 on Monday August 24 2020, @06:23PM (4 children)
What we're doing now is paying the costs for junkies to get their drugs by letting them break into our homes and cars to steal our shit and pay for drugs of questionable quality at black market rates. Everyone hates that, so then we hrow them in jail. It's expensive as hell! We spend billions of dollars through law enforcement, property damage, medical emergency services, incarceration costs, etc... What we get for it are gangs, drug cartels, drug dealers, tainted drugs, homeless people, and dead junkies.
Why don't we try paying for it by funding health services instead? Maybe it would be cheaper to pay for pharmaceutical companies to make the drugs and supply it to the junkies. Right now we're essentially paying the drug cartels for all our problems. I don't see any reason we couldn't just starve them of funds by supplying the drugs through standard commercial channels. We know what the current policies have done. Generations of people have grown up with them and it's not working. I think it worth trying something different for a while.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 24 2020, @06:55PM (3 children)
The problem with alternative approaches to drugs is that you cannot/will not coerce the druggie into doing anything he doesn't want. Offer clean, free drugs to the junkie with "treatment" also made available? Pretty much guaranteed he won't take the treatment--just the drugs. The fact is that people who are so strung out on drugs that they are doing it as street people can't be trusted to make logical decisions. Yet, under a liberal, "reformed" drug treatment regime, nobody will be allowed to make decisions for them.
It will be like the homeless programs where shelters are available for the homeless but they do not take the govt up on the offer because they value them their freedom more. Thus, we still have a homeless problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 24 2020, @07:06PM
Replying to my own post, here is how Portugal dealt with their drug problem.
Note that drugs are still illegal.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/daphne-bramham-decriminalization-is-no-silver-bullet-says-portugals-drug-czar/wcm/d4e049f8-c1c4-4a4c-805c-b7b4d4eb3b51/amp/ [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Booga1 on Monday August 24 2020, @07:41PM
That's partly because the housing comes with strings attached. Usually, "no drugs or alcohol." The problems are intertwined and we won't ever solve them perfectly, but we don't need to. We just need to do better than what we're doing now.
I saw a news article where Seattle tried doing away with the requirement to stay clean and the results saved a whole lot of money in the reduction of emergency medical services alone.
Found it: https://komonews.com/news/local/seattle-saved-32-million-by-housing-most-difficult-homeless [komonews.com]
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday August 25 2020, @01:01AM
So what? If he just takes the drugs, that still cuts off the gangs and cartels and the violence they bring. He has still avoided the dirty tainted drugs that bring unpaid visits to the ER. We still get to skip the whole contaminated needles in the park thing.
Oddly, when junkies have an unfettered supply of clean drugs and the ability to use them without becoming a criminal, they sometimes even become productive citizens.
After WWI, England had a fair number of involuntary addicts that acquired their heroin habits in army hospitals. They didn't enjoy being addicted, but they did mostly live productive lives after the war.
At least some of today's addicts acquired their habit through prescribed medication for legitimate medical conditions. The current policy of cutting them off and turning them into criminals isn't working.