Addiction (Abingdon, England)Jun 7, 2024

What Cannabis Can Teach Us About Making Rules for Psychedelics

Psychedelic Science Weekly Brief ↗PubMed ↗DOI ↗OA ↗

Updated Apr 2, 2026

Abstract

Government regulatory bodies in Australia, Israel, Canada, and the United States now permit the use of psychedelics for medical purposes.

There has been a resurgence of interest in psychedelics as potential treatments for addiction and psychiatric conditions.
Citizen action and corporate financing in the United States have led to petitions to legalize psilocybin and other psychedelics for medical and recreational use.
The current movement to expand the use of psychedelics is similar to the cannabis legalization movement, particularly regarding therapeutic claims.
Debating the legalization of psychedelics for nonmedical use should not be misrepresented as a strictly medical issue.
There is a need for rigorous clinical research on dosing and potency of psychedelics to avoid misleading claims.
Coordination among federal, state, and local governments is necessary to regulate the manufacture, sale, and distribution of psychedelics.

Simplified

The turn of the century brought a resurgence of interest in psychedelics as a treatment for addiction and other psychiatric conditions, accompanied by extensive positive media attention and private equity investment. Government regulatory bodies in Australia, Israel, Canada and the United States now permit use of psychedelics for medical purposes. In the United States, citizen action and corporate financing have led to petitions and ballot initiatives to legalize psilocybin and other psychedelics for medical and recreational use. Given this momentum, policymakers must grapple with important questions that define whether and how psychedelics are made available to the public, as well as how companies produce and promote them. The current push to broaden the production, sale, and use of psychedelics bears many parallels to the movement to legalize cannabis in the United States and other nations-most notably, the use of poorly-evidenced therapeutic claims to create a de facto recreational market via the health care system. Experience with cannabis highlights the value of debating the question of legalization for nonmedical use as such rather than misrepresenting it as a medical issue. The lessons of cannabis policy also suggest a need to challenge hyping of psychedelic research findings; to promote rigorous clinical research on dosing and potency; to minimize the influence of for-profit industry in shaping policies to their economic advantage; and to coordinate federal, state, and local governments to regulate the manufacture, sale and distribution of psychedelic drugs (regardless of whether they are legalized for medical and/or recreational use).

Key numbers

8.0%

Lifetime Use Increase

Lifetime use of psychedelics more than doubled from 3.4% in 2012 to 8.0% in 2022.

$1.6 billion

Private Investment Surge

Private investment in psychedelics jumped from $13 million in 2017 to over $1.6 billion in 2021.

36 bills

Legislative Proposals Increase

State legislators introduced 36 bills to liberalize psychedelics in 2022, up from five in 2019.

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Funding

Competing interests

C.A. receives funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the South Carolina Opioid Recovery Fund, the South Carolina Department of Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Services and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation. W.H. has received funding in the past 3 years from the Australia Research Council and the World Health Organization. K.H. receives salary support from the US Department of Veterans Affairs and research grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Veterans Affairs Health Services Research and Development Service. He is a non‐executive director of Indivior. J.M. declares research grants from the UK National Institute for Health Research and Indivior (sponsored by King's College London) and from Beckley PsyTech (for a study of psychedelic‐assisted treatment for alcohol use disorder). He serves as an advisor to the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, English Department of Health and Social Care and the National Institute on Drug Abuse's Center for Clinical Trials Network. He declares honoraria and travel support from PCM Scientific, OPEN Health and Indivior.

PubMed

What Cannabis Can Teach Us About Making Rules for Psychedelics

Abstract

Key numbers

Full Text

Funding

Competing interests

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