PORT TOWNSEND LEADER
“Officials say criminal cases of psychedelic drug use are uncommon, but local legalization remains unlikely”
Posted Friday, May 14, 2021 9:54 am
Dr. Sunil Aggarwal, co-founder of Seattle’s Advanced Integrated Medical Science Institute and a medical geographer who has studied the use of entheogens for the past 20 years, asked officials to reconsider their approach to enforcement of the substances during a recent county workshop on the issue.
“This is an important time in public health in this country,” Aggarwal said. “There’s still these major issues that we’re facing in society … addiction, depression, anxiety, despair, suicidality, and so many others.”
Aggarwal added the next wave of public health professionals are hoping to address issues surrounding well-being by exploring the question of what it means to be human.
“What does it mean to be a human being? That’s not just your physical health, your mental health, but it’s also your spiritual health, your spiritual well-being. That’s what we call the integrative view of health.”
“A lot of this is recognizing that systems are way more complex than we understand them to be,” Aggarwal explained. “Sometimes we have to start local. We have to try out solutions in a local area and then spread those out beyond. That’s what I think this idea around decriminalization of entheogens is about.”
