Date: February 3, 2022
Landmark Petition to Reschedule Psilocybin filed with DEA
Bipartisan Congressional support for allowing terminal patients to seek relief from anxiety and depression in alignment with ongoing international research on the effectiveness of psilocybin in mental health care
Statement:
Following issuance of the Ninth Circuit’s opinion in AIMS v DEA on Monday (1/31), finding lack of jurisdiction to review the DEA’s refusal to allow access to psilocybin pursuant to duly enacted Right to Try laws, Petitioners have filed a Petition for Rescheduling of Psilocybin from schedule I to schedule II. The Petition offers DEA a way to create a pathway so that terminally ill patients can access to psilocybin.
In a letter to the DEA sent on January 18, bipartisan Congressional members encouraged DEA to use its power to create a pathway to access psilocybin, shown to be remarkably effective in relieving anxiety and depression in patients with advanced illness. Given that the interests of terminally ill patients are at stake, where the advance of illness makes time short, there is an urgency for DEA’s action on the Petition. Congressional interest in the DEA’s response to this Petition will likely be keen.
On today’s Psychoactive Podcast Matt Johnson, the first researcher to be appointed to an endowed chair in psychedelic studies, the Susan Hill Ward Professor in Psychedelics and Consciousness at Johns Hopkins University, says leaving psilocybin on schedule I is “absolutely absurd.”
(at minute: 19:52)
