Tony Shields@TonyShields_
When will psilocybin be legalized?
I had someone ask me what I think the landscape will look like 3-5 years from now in terms of psilocybin mushrooms and their legal status.
I wanted to jump to an answer, but I the situation is way more complex than it seems...
Mushroom Dispensaries:
You'd think that the trend of more and more mushroom dispensaries will continue, similar to what happened to cannabis.
They would open, get shut down, open again, and eventually enforcement capitulates and stops wasting resources trying to shut them down.
Tons of these dispensaries have been popping up- the best example being Vancouver, Canada.
In 2019, the city of Vancouver even struck down a motion that would crack down on the dispensaries, essentially giving them a licence to operate...
But just a couple of weeks ago, The Medicinal Mushroom Dispensary in Vancouver, run by long time cannabis advocate Dana Larsen was raided by the VPD.
It opened up again within a week- but still- if dispensaries are getting shut down in Vancouver, they don't stand a chance anywhere else. (yet)
Rescheduling Is HARD:
In the USA, psilocybin remains a Schedule 1 drug, which means it is considered to have:
i) no currently accepted medical use, and;
ii) a high potential for abuse
Considering the amount of research that has come out in the last 10-15 years, this just seems absurd.
There has even been a years-long battle to try and get it rescheduled… which has had some success.
The DEA was actually forced to support its position, with a higher court's ruling that it didn’t have sufficient evidence to deny the rescheduling request.
But all that was only to get it moved from Schedule 1 to Schedule 2- which is still wildly restrictive.
Truly rescheduling, to the point where it can be used widely in a medicinal sense, or perhaps even a recreational market, is going to be a herculean task.
Public Perception is Fickle:
The narrative surrounding psilocybin has shifted dramatically over the last few years-
The so-called “psychedelic renaissance” is here, and psilocybin is re-emerging in a much more positive light.
But that can change quickly.
The recent case of the Alaskan Airlines pilot who had a psychotic break and tried to “shut down the engines” mid-flight is a perfect example.
The pilot had admitted to consuming mushrooms a few days before the incident, which means the acute effects of psilocybin would have long worn off.
Still, all the articles highlighted the mushrooms as the culprit.
Whether or not that is the case doesn’t really matter, because most people who read headlines aren’t going to look into it much further than that. It only takes a few of these negative stories to undo years of progress.
Over Medicalization:
The fact that psilocybin is showing potential for things like PTSD, end of life anxiety, treatment resistant depression could make it seem like it is only good for those things… and leave no room for things like introspection, self reflection, and recreational purposes.
So if you assume that legalized psilocybin means growing whole mushrooms or buying dried ones at a store, it might actually be synthetic psilocybin, or even some derivative that closely resembles it.
Some are already working on a molecule to get the benefits “without the trip.”
Who Knows…
The only thing I know for sure is that no one really knows how this is all going to unfold! It is interesting to think about though. What do you think?
