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21 N.Y.U. J. Legis. & Pub. Pol'y 69 (2018-2019)
Psychedelic Medicine for Mental Illness and Substance Use Disorders: Overcoming Social and Legal Obstacles

handle is hein.journals/nyulpp21 and id is 75 raw text is: 








PSYCHEDELIC MEDICINE FOR MENTAL

        ILLNESS AND SUBSTANCE USE

     DISORDERS: OVERCOMING SOCIAL

              AND LEGAL OBSTACLES

                             Mason   Marks*

        Mental illness is a public health crisis. Millions of Americans suffer
    through their days crippled by symptoms of mood, anxiety, and substance
    use disorders. These conditions take large social and economic tolls on our
    communities. However, the medicines used to treat them have remained
    largely unchanged for over fifty years. Though helpful to many people,
    traditional psychiatric drugs are often ineffective, prompting patients and
    physicians to seek alternatives including psychedelic compounds such as
    ketamine, psilocybin, MDMA, and DMT.  These drugs showed therapeutic
    potential in the mid-twentieth century until the U.S. War on Drugs halted all
    research. Now,   having  few  alternatives, scientists are revisiting
    psychedelics as treatments for mental illness.
         This article is the first comprehensive review of the social and legal
    obstacles to developing psychedelic medicines. It argues that the current
    mental health and opioid crises demand scientific exploration of the thera-
    peutic potential of these drugs. With subtle modifications to state and fed-
    eral drug law, psychedelics could be thoroughly studied and made available
    to patients under carefully controlled conditions. Possible pathways include
    working within the existing federal regulatory framework to gain Food and
    Drug   Administration (FDA)   approval for  psychedelics; removing
    psychedelics from the Drug Enforcement  Administration (DEA) list of
    Schedule  I controlled substances; reducing federal  restrictions on
    psychedelics research without changing their Schedule I status; decriminal-
    izing psychedelics at the state level; creating state-governed systems for
    regulating psychedelics; and implementing state-sponsored psychedelics re-
    search programs. Some  approaches may  be counterproductive or have
    counterintuitive results. Recent state level marijuana reform efforts could
    serve as a roadmap for amending the laws governing psychedelics. Ulti-
    mately, creative solutions that promote collaboration between state and fed-
    eral government may be most likely to succeed.



    * Visiting Fellow, Yale Law School, Information Society Project. JD, Vanderbilt
University Law School; MD, Tufts University School of Medicine; BA, Amherst Col-
lege. I wish to thank Ellen Clayton, Robert Mikos, Rebecca Crootof, Alexander
Nourafshan, Claudia Haupt, Kamel Ajji, Ignacio Cofone, and Joshua Kors for their
helpful comments, advice, and encouragement on earlier drafts of this article. I am
grateful to Jack Balkin, Sean Seymore, Owen Jones, and the faculty and staff of the
Information Society Project for their support. Comments are appreciated (ma-
son.marks@yale.edu).

                                    69


Imaged with Permission of N.Y.U. Journal of Legislation and Public Policy

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