This Week in Psychedelics - 8.21.20

Cannabis

• Maine Marijuana Sales Can Finally Begin, Officials Announce Four Years After Voters Legalized It (Marijuana Moment)

• Cannabis Customers Can Now Buy Marijuana From Vending Machines In Colorado (CBS Denver)

• South Dakota Could Pass Two Marijuana Ballot Measures In November (Marijuana Moment)

• Mexican President Says Marijuana Legalization Will Advance Through Congress As Session Approaches (Marijuana Moment)

• Study: After-Hours Marijuana Use Doesn’t Negatively Impact Job Performance (NORML)

• Federal Court Denies DEA Request To Dismiss Marijuana Rescheduling Case (Marijuana Moment)

• The Future Is Here: Weed Vending Machines Are Coming to Massachusetts (MERRY JANE)

• Local Marijuana Bans In California Keep Illicit Market Alive And Block Revenue, Study Shows (Marijuana Moment)

• Vermont: Bicameral Committee Meets in Effort to Finalize Marijuana Sales Measure (NORML)

• Marijuana Activists Ask Supreme Court To Hear Their Case Against DEA (Marijuana Moment)

• Trump Voices Concern That Putting Marijuana On The Ballot Makes Republicans Lose (Marijuana Moment)

• Poll: Republicans Like Marijuana Legalization, Too (Even If It’s Kamala Harris’s Idea) (Forbes)

• Parents of toddler with severe epilepsy seek legal review of cannabis oil guidelines (The Guardian)

• DEA Proposes Hemp And CBD Rules To Comply With Crop’s Legalization (Marijuana Moment)

• That Study Linking Prenatal Weed Use to Autism Has a Few Serious Flaws (MERRY JANE)

• This Is Weighing Down Multi-State Cannabis Operator Profitability (New Cannabis Ventures)

• AAA gives grants to police, non-profits to combat marijuana-impaired driving (WAND-TV)

• The FDA Is Now Hiring People to Study Thousands Cannabis Products (MERRY JANE)

• Drive to Free Black Woman With Marijuana Life Sentence Exposes “Habitual Criminal” Laws (Filter)

• Texas Ban On Selling Smokeable Hemp Temporarily Lifted By Judge (Marijuana Moment)

• County Will Let Marijuana Offenders Off the Hook If They Get a Card After Arrest (Phoenix New Times)

LSD

• Director Oliver Stone admits lacing 'up-tight' dad's drink with LSD to loosen him up (Mirror)

Magic Mushrooms

• The Mystical Experience is Critical for the Therapeutic Effects of Psilocybin (Psychedelic Science Review)

• Why the DEA Went After a Small-Time Mushroom Dealer in Denver (Lucid News)

• Mydecine™ Launches World’s First Natural-Sourced cGMP Psilocybin for Global Research, Sales, and Distribution Enterprise (Psilocybin Alpha)

• Investigation launched after Home Office psilocybin rescheduling response (Health Europa)

• Johns Hopkins Wants To Hear About Your Psychedelic Journeys For New ‘Real-World’ Study (Marijuana Moment)

• How to Make Shroom Tea: The Ultimate Mushroom Tea Guide (DoubleBlind)

• Magic Mushrooms, Memory and Resistance in the Sierra Mazateca (Chacruna)

MDMA

• Can Taking MDMA with LSD Help Prevent a ‘Bad Trip’? New Clinical Trial Investigates (Psilocybin Alpha)

• Psychedelics Group Raises $30 Million From Execs At GoDaddy, SpaceX And Others For MDMA Study (Marijuana Moment)

• Buddhist University Partners with MAPS to Offer MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy Training (Lucid News)

• Police issue warning about Donald Trump-shaped ecstasy pills (The Guardian)

DMT

• Reports of positive encounters with autonomous entities after taking DMT suggest drug may have therapeutic potential (PsyPost)

Ayahuasca

• Remembering Dr. Jordi Riba, Ayahuasca Research Pioneer (1968–2020) (Chacruna)

• Psychedelic brew ayahuasca produces therapeutic benefits lasting up to six months, study finds (PsyPost)

• Russian Jailed for 11.5 Years Over Ayahuasca Bottle From Peru (The Moscow Times)

• Tripping on Ayahuasca has always been fun, but now it might be good for you (GOOD)

Ketamine

• Ketamine response biomarker may help tailor antidepressant treatments (Healio)

• How Ketamine Infusions Helped Me (Pain News Network)

Miscellaneous

• Plant Medicine Church in Oakland Gets Raided by Local Police Department (DoubleBlind)

• Advocates Unveil Guide For Psychedelic Healing Ceremonies They Hope To Legalize In Oakland (Marijuana Moment)

• This Dot-Com Guru is Asking Trump to Legalize Psychedelics (DoubleBlind)

• After the pandemic, could psychedelic treatment help us heal? (Mic)

• Psychedelics Could Help People with Addiction and Anxiety (CBS News)

• Canada takes step to decriminalize drug possession amid opioid crisis (The Globe and Mail)

• A plan to overhaul the UK’s unjust drugs policy is just around the corner (LabourList)

• The Phoenix Effect: Reversing Mental Age With Psychedelics (qwerky science)

• Field Trip Psychedelics Inc. Expands Stateside With Psychedelic-Enhanced Psychotherapy Clinic in New York City (Psilocybin Alpha)

• Watch The First Ad For Oregon’s Drug Decriminalization Ballot Measure (Marijuana Moment)

• Breaking Down a Model Bill to Decriminalize All Drugs (Filter)

• From pot to shrooms: What's next for decriminalization? (Toronto Sun)

• This is Your Brain on Ego Death (Psychedelic Science Review)

• Beckley Psytech Reveals Scientific Advisory Board Consisting of Renowned Psychedelic Experts (Psilocybin Alpha)

• Inside the Work of a New York Psychedelic Trip Guide (Filter)

• What Psychedelics Could Mean for Eating Disorders (Lucid News)

• The Role of the Claustrum in the Psychedelic Experience (Psychedelic Science Review)

• IntelGenx Enters into Feasibility Agreement with ATAI Life Sciences to Develop Pharmaceutical-Grade Polymeric Film-Based Psychedelics (Psilocybin Alpha)

• Higher Profile: Madison Margolin, Co-Founder, DoubleBlind Magazine (High Times)

• Spiritual Politics with Ismail Lourido Ali (Chacruna)

• CFN Enterprises Inc. Adds Cybin Corp. to Growing Psychedelics Client Roster (Yahoo! Finance)

• Nutritional High Completes Acquisition of Psychedelic Science Corp (Psilocybin Alpha)

• Psychedelic drugs heighten perception, but do they foster creativity and inspire art? (MEAWW)

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Disclaimer: "This Week in Psychedelics" does not censor or analyze the news links presented here. The purpose of this column is solely to catalogue how psychedelics are presented by the mass media, which includes everything from the latest scientific research to misinformation.

Ayahuasca Researcher Dr. Jordi Riba Passes Away

Jasmine Virdi, writing for Chacruna:

On August 14, 2020, the world bid farewell to scientific pioneer, Dr. Jordi Riba. The untimely death of the Catalan ayahuasca researcher has come as a harsh blow to the close-knit ayahuasca community the world over.

Born on September 12, 1968, in Barcelona, Spain, Riba acquired a bachelor’s degree in pharmacy from the University of Barcelona in 1993. He went on to complete his doctorate in pharmacology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) in 2003. Riba was undoubtedly one of the most prolific researchers in the field, having devoted well over two decades of his life to unveiling the mysteries of ayahuasca. He published nearly 80 scientific articles, was an active speaker at conferences throughout Europe, the United States, and Latin America, and was considered a preeminent academic exploring the clinical uses of ayahuasca.

Among his most notable contributions was Riba’s success in conducting the world’s first controlled clinical trial with ayahuasca and the first neuroimaging studies with the brew. His pioneering understanding of the mechanistic and therapeutic potentials of ayahuasca, alongside other psychoactive substances like 5-MeO-DMT, salvinorin-A, and cannabinoids, were key in validating investigations into these previously stigmatized substances.

I was previously unaware of Dr. Jordi Riba’s work, and perhaps you were too. He contributed so much to ayahuasca research that it’s a shame I didn’t hear about him before his death, but it’s good to know about his work now.

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Oakland Plant Medicine Church Gets Raided by Local Police

Mary Carreon, with a shocking story for DoubleBlind:

At 1 pm on Thursday, August 13, Zide Door—an entheogenic church in Oakland, California, that recognizes cannabis and psilocybin mushrooms as religious sacraments—was raided by Oakland Police Department (OPD) during parishioner visiting hours.

In 2004, Oakland voters passed Measure Z, making cannabis the lowest priority for law enforcement. Oakland also happens to be one of the several localities around the United States leading the psychedelic reform movement. In June 2019, activist group Decriminalize Nature convinced the city council to pass a resolution to make entheogenic plants and fungi the lowest priority for Oakland law enforcement, while defunding police action targeted at those cultivating, foraging, or giving away these substances.

Like the article says, Oakland decriminalized psychedelic plants and fungi last year. So why was Zide Door raided?

“The only activities covered under the resolution are grow, gather, gift—not a store front,” explains Carlos Plazola, chair of the board of Decriminalize Nature. Moreover, while the resolution was modeled after Measure Z, it does not actually cover cannabis—since cannabis, already, is encompassed by another set of state and local regulations.

And what’s more, the search warrant for Zide Door didn’t even mention psilocybin mushrooms, but only mentioned cannabis. Plazola suspects that other dispensaries in the area may have tipped off the police to Zide Door because it was operating without a permit. Hodges argues, however, that Zide Door didn’t need a commercial cannabis license because it was a church—not a dispensary. “It’s not possible to get a state permit to do what we do.”

According to Oakland officials, the police raided Zide Door because they saw it as a cause for an uptick in shootings in the area. But Hodges sees it differently: Across the street from Zide Door is an illegal gambling hall, where shootings have gone down. In fact, he says he didn’t even know the gambling hall was there until OPD asked him for outdoor surveillance footage that might have captured those shootings.

Indeed, the Zide Door raid has taken place amidst a tenuous moment for Oakland in regard to local crime. Legal cannabis retailers have been “under siege” of violent robberies—including the murder of a 33-year-old woman during an attempted robbery at an alleged legal dispensary—as recently as July 17, 2020. Since the riots in early June, dispensaries have experienced a massive spike in vandalism, in addition to robberies.

So according to Oakland police, Zide Door is an illegal cannabis dispensary, not a psychedelic church, and thus it is running afoul of the laws regulating cannabis in California. If you ask me, that’s quite a loose interpretation of what’s going on, but either way it’s going to be interesting to follow this case to see what happens.

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New Clinical Trial Investigates Administering MDMA Alongside LSD

Psilocybin Alpha:

It’s not hard to imagine why a bad trip may result in a net disbenefit to a patient seeking to resolve PTSD. Acute anxiety has also been linked to less favourable long-term outcomes in patients treated with LSD (in experimental settings) for depression.

With this in mind, a new Clinical Trial, registered yesterday with ClinicalTrials.gov, seeks to reduce the risk of negative psychedelic effects when taking LSD. The Trial hypothesises that co-administering MDMA with LSD may mitigate the negative psychedelic effects, due to MDMA’s observed ability to reliably induce positive mood.

A clinical trial looking at candyflipping? Simply incredible. And who is behind this, you ask? We don’t know for sure at this point, but Psilocybin Alpha has a hunch:

We believe this Clinical Trial, and its results, belong to MindMed. MindMed holds a licence to 8 Clinical Trials related to LSD with the University Hospital Basel in Switzerland, and recently set-up a European subsidiary in the same country.

Recruitment of the 24 participants has yet to begin. We will keep you updated on the progress and results of this exciting study.

It’s inspiring to see psychedelic research expanding into places that psychonauts have been exploring for decades, like drug combining. Personally, I have found candyflipping to be extremely beneficial for my own entheogenic journeying and am excited to see what sort of results come out of this trial. Assuming MindMed shares the data, that is.

However, I’m not entirely sure that combining MDMA with LSD will be successful at reducing the chance of having a bad trip. While my own experiences with candyflipping have been overwhelmingly positive, I have also been witness to some bad trips that other people went through that involved combining these two drugs. But—to be fair—those particular disasters could have probably been avoided if the set, setting, and dosage had been more carefully planned out, and I do think there is a chance that candyflipping might help mitigate the negative effects of LSD for some people, especially in a controlled clinical setting.

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Oakland Activists Share Plan for Legalizing Psychedelic Healing Ceremonies

Kyle Jaeger, writing for Marijuana Moment:

Psychedelics activists recently released guidelines for safely and effectively participating in healing ceremonies using entheogenic substances as they await legislative action to legalize the practice in Oakland.

The guidelines focus on preparation (including the importance of education), the psychedelic experience itself, integration after the trip is over, and nurturing long-term and community growth via reciprocity. It’s a good jumping off place; hopefully Oakland will be successful in passing this later this year.

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