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James J. H. Rucker, a psychiatrist and honorary lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, has argued in a British Medical Journal (BMJ) article that psychedelics should be reclassified as schedule 2 compounds:
He explains that many trials of psychedelics published before prohibition, in the 1950s and 1960s, suggested "beneficial change in many psychiatric disorders".
However, research ended after 1967. In the UK psychedelic drugs were legally classified as schedule 1 class A drugs - that is, as having "no accepted medical use and the greatest potential for harm, despite the research evidence to the contrary," he writes.
Rucker points out that psychedelics remain more legally restricted than heroin and cocaine. "But no evidence indicates that psychedelic drugs are habit forming; little evidence indicates that they are harmful in controlled settings; and much historical evidence shows that they could have use in common psychiatric disorders."
In fact, recent studies indicate that psychedelics have "clinical efficacy in anxiety associated with advanced cancer, obsessive compulsive disorder, tobacco and alcohol addiction, and cluster headaches," he writes.
And he explains that, at present, larger clinical studies on psychedelics are made "almost impossible by the practical, financial and bureaucratic obstacles" imposed by their schedule 1 classification. Currently, only one manufacturer in the world produces psilocybin for trial purposes, he says, at a "prohibitive" cost of £100,000 for 1 g (50 doses).
[...] He concludes that psychedelics are neither harmful nor addictive compared with other controlled substances, and he calls on the UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and the 2016 UN General Assembly Special Session on Drugs, "to recommend that psychedelics be reclassified as schedule 2 compounds to enable a comprehensive, evidence based assessment of their therapeutic potential."
[See also: Research into Psychedelics, Shut Down for Decades, is Now Yielding Exciting Results - Ed.]
Original Submission
(Score: 4, Insightful) by RedBear on Sunday May 31 2015, @01:38PM
I feel I must say that I've seen no evidence that the psychedelics are capable, by themselves, of making anyone believe in conspiracy theories. There are plenty of people who have never gone anywhere near any recreational drugs besides alcohol and/or nicotine yet are rabid conspiracy theorists. I have a strong suspicion after watching many talks of people like Terrence McKenna (who experimented with all types of psychedelics for decades and was still very rooted in reality) that psychedelics give you back exactly what you bring with you. If you are a credulous sort of person prone to believing in supernatural beings, aliens or conspiracy theories, you will be that person with or without psychedelics. It appears to me that the worst that can be said of psychedelics is that you might have a "bad trip", which frequently causes the user to simply lose interest in using the offending substance. Permanently.
Generally, the primary effect especially of certain compounds like DMT and its cousin ayahuasca seems to be that people who are very narrow-minded and/or self-centered wind up being slightly less so after a few trips (also permanently, which is interesting), and everyone tends to wind up feeling vaguely "spiritual" and more connected to (and empathic toward) the planet, nature, other people, and "the universe". Oh, the horror. What people end up doing with those new feelings and perspectives is entirely up to the constitution of the individual.
Now the stimulants, like cocaine and amphetamines, those are addictive and when overused have a strong tendency to lead to extreme paranoia and psychosis. We have plenty of medical evidence for that. But the psychedelics? There are a lot of New World Order nuts who _should_ do some psychedelics. Might give them a different perspective.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 2) by CRCulver on Sunday May 31 2015, @03:25PM
That is precisley the problem I am referring to. People who use certain hallucinogens develop feelings of "spirituality" or connection. However, they are generally unable to defend the validity of those feelings through argumentation. Why is the emphathy they developed necessarily a good thing? Could certain perceptions of oneness simply be a misleading effect of altered brain chemistry? I have met very few users of hallucinogens who were capable of rationally looking back at their trip and considering the possibility that it gave them false views.