Hallucinogenic mushrooms as well as LSD are being called back in medical research by James Rucker, King’s College London psychiatrist.
As both the magic mushrooms and LSD are banned from use as recreational drugs, they are also hindering medical research with their prohibiting prices and governments backed legal barriers.
It is a pity and a major loss for medical science which, until the prohibition of the drugs in the late 1960’s, had already started proving a burgeoning array of beneficial effects of both LSD and the mushrooms.
Now, in the U.K. they are to be found under class A, schedule 1 classification, entailing that there is no hope for any accepted use of hallucinogenic mushrooms or LSD, be it medical or recreational.
James Rucker is calling on the government to lax the regulation on this specific category.
His arguments find substance in the studies conducted in the 1950s, as well as the 1960s that showed at the time the significant capacity of treating anxiety or addiction by means of LSD or mushrooms.
At that time medical research was producing a blooming number of studies to hail the benefits of now schedule 1 drugs. Dr. Rucker also raises questions as to how the situation is seen fit by the government that has imposed less strict regulation on heroin or cocaine.
Both these drugs are known to be highly dangerous and addictive. Yet, hallucinogenic mushrooms and LSD hold the prime spot in a prohibitive legislation.
“No evidence indicates that psychedelic drugs are habit forming, little evidence indicates that they are harmful in controlled settings and much historical evidence shows that they could have use in common psychiatric disorders,”
psychiatrist Rucker wrote.
In his article, he added that even costly recent studies conducted on the effect of psychedelic drugs proved just how efficient they are when dealing with anxiety.
Addiction to substances such as alcohol or nicotine is also clinically treatable with psychedelic drugs. Obsessive compulsive disorder or severe headaches fall in the same category.
In spite of all the evidence gathered by Dr. Rucker, in the U.K. there are only four facilities that hold licenses which allow them to have schedule 1 drugs on the inventory. The price for a license is 5000 pounds.
Add that in the entire world there is only one producer of psilocybin – the psychedelic mushroom compound – that prices the merchandise at 100,000 pounds per gram. Therefore, legislative prohibition draws the prohibitive prices, hindering accurate medical research.
The extensive article of Dr. James Rucker is published in the British Medical Journal, mirroring the concerns of more researchers in the U.K. and not only.
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