This Week in Psychedelics - 12.11.20

Cannabis

• Mexican Supreme Court Extends Deadline To Legalize Marijuana As Lawmakers Continue To Advance Bill (Marijuana Moment)

• House Approves Marijuana Research Bill Days After Voting To Federally Legalize Cannabis (Marijuana Moment)

• What To Expect From The House Of Representatives’ Passing Of Federal Cannabis Reform (Forbes)

• Feds’ Post-Election Warning: Marijuana Still Banned For Federal Workers Despite State Legalization (Marijuana Moment)

• NBA Will Reportedly Not Test Players for Marijuana Next Season (Complex)

• New Jersey lawmakers agree on recreational marijuana legalization bill (Marijuana Business Daily)

• Nebraska Senators Will Work To Put Recreational Marijuana On The Ballot In 2022 (Marijuana Moment)

• 70% in U.S. Support Expunging Marijuana Convictions After Vote to Decriminalize Weed: Poll (Newsweek)

• Embracing Marijuana Legalization Could Have Offset Democratic Election Losses, Poll Indicates (Marijuana Moment)

• Dumping CBD Oil On Strawberries Extends Their Shelf Life And Stops Mold Growth, New Study Finds (Marijuana Moment)

• Why Europe's big cannabis route is so hard to shut (BBC)

• Majority Of Republican Voters Support House-Passed Marijuana Legalization Bill, Poll Finds (Marijuana Moment)

• Jay-Z’s Cannabis Brand, Monogram, Launches With $50 Hand-Rolled Joints (Forbes)

LSD

• Mumbai: ‘Paper weight can’t be counted while quantifying LSD’ (Times of India)

Magic Mushrooms

• N.J. bill to lessen jail time for ‘magic’ mushrooms moves forward (NJ.com)

• Canada Will Let Health Care Professionals Legally Use Psychedelic Mushrooms, Health Minister Says (Marijuana Moment)

• Mydecine Innovations Group to Make First Commercial Export of Legal Psilocybin Mushrooms (Globe Newswire)

• Magic Mushrooms Are Expanding Minds and Advancing an Emerging Field of Science (Discover Magazine)

• Can the active ingredient in magic mushrooms help treat anxiety? Researchers want to know (The Age)

MDMA

• MDMA-assisted couples therapy investigated in landmark pilot trial (New Atlas)

DMT

• Psychedelic drug DMT to be trialled in UK to treat depression (The Guardian)

• Why Does the Brain Make Its Own DMT? (DoubleBlind)

• How to Integrate a Difficult-to-Remember DMT Experience (Maps of the Mind)

Ayahuasca

• Miley Cyrus Says Ayahuasca Changed Her Life (Lucid News)

• Preserving Entangled Ayahuasca (Chacruna)

5-MeO-DMT

• Usona Institute Publishes Synthesis and Characterization of cGMP 5-MeO-DMT (Psilocybin Alpha)

Peyote

• Directing to the Divine Among Native American Peyotists (Spirit Pharmacist)

Novel Psychoactive Substances

• New Compound Related to Psychedelic Ibogaine Could Treat Addiction, Depression (UC Davis)

Ketamine

• PharmaTher Files FDA Pre-IND Meeting Request for Ketamine in Parkinson’s Disease (Psilocybin Alpha)

• Mind Cure Moves into Psychedelic Assisted Therapy with British Columbia Location Offering Ketamine and Psilocybin Therapy (Psilocybin Alpha)

Miscellaneous

• Psychedelics Weren't As Common in Ancient Cultures As We Think (VICE)

• The Top 10 Psychedelic Research Papers of 2020 (Psychedelic Science Review)

• This Is How Psychedelics Hack the Brain, According to Scientists (VICE)

• The Case for Macrodosing (Rolling Stone)

• Psychedelic Guide Abuse: High-Control Group Dynamics and Complicity in the Perpetuation of Harm (Psychedelics Today)

• UK government set for psychedelics investment windfall (Financial Times)

• It Takes Guts: Psychedelic Treatment Approaches to Autoimmune Disorders (Psychedelic Science Review)

• Humans Have Used Drugs With Sex For Millennia – The Reasons Are Much Broader Than You Think (TalkingDrugs)

• How To Provide Psychedelic Support (Lucid News)

• Psychedelics, Therapy, and the Law (Psychedelic Frontier)

• Christopher Valore (AKA The Architect) talks “Conductor,” His Virtual-Reality, Psychedelic-Visual Sandbox Platform (Psymposia)

• Psychedelics, Shadows, and Spiritual Bypassing (The Third Wave)

• How Music Therapists Helped Build Psychedelic Therapy (Chacruna)

• How to Change Your Ability to Change (Psychedelic Science Review)

• Combining Movement and Microdosing: Athletics, Exercise, and Flow (The Third Wave)

Think Wilder is reader-supported. If you enjoyed this week’s update, please consider helping out by becoming a patron, making a one-time donation, or sharing this post with a friend. Thank you for your support.

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.

This Week in Psychedelics 12.11.20 Will Be Delayed

Think Wilder needs a break. This week’s update will hopefully come out next week.

House Approves Federal Marijuana Legalization Bill in Historic Vote

Kyle Jaeger, writing for Marijuana Moment:

The U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill to federally legalize marijuana in a historic vote on Friday.

It’s the day that cannabis reform advocates have been building toward for years—a full floor vote to end prohibition in a chamber of Congress.

Prior to the bill’s approval in a 228 to 164 vote, Republican lawmakers spent days criticizing their Democratic counterparts for even bringing the legislation to the floor.

While the vote was mostly along party lines, five Republicans supported the reform and six Democrats opposed it.

Under the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act, cannabis would be federally descheduled and those with prior convictions would have their records expunged. The descheduling provisions would be retroactive, too.

Despite the unprecedented House victory for reformers, few believe the legislation stands a chance in the Republican-controlled Senate, at least before the end of the current Congress early next month. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris (D-CA) is the lead sponsor of the Senate companion version of the bill.

Ahead of the bill’s passage, debate on the floor largely consisted of Democrats making the case that the reform will help to right the wrongs of the racist war on drugs, and Republicans arguing that legalization would cause harms to children and public safety and that now is not the right time to consider the issue in any case.

Another (mostly symbolic) cannabis policy reform win for the week. Although this likely won’t pass in the Senate, at least the ball is still rolling forward in the right direction.

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This Week in Psychedelics - 12.4.20

Cannabis

• House Approves Federal Marijuana Legalization Bill In Historic Vote (Marijuana Moment)

• U.N. Reclassifies Cannabis as a Less Dangerous Drug (The New York Times)

• MORE Act Approved by House Rules Committee (NORML)

• These States Could Have Marijuana Legalization On Their 2022 Ballots (Marijuana Moment)

• Arizona: Prop. 207 Legalization Measure Officially Takes Effect (NORML)

• CBD Doesn’t Impair Driving, Landmark Study Finds, While THC’s Effects Fade In Hours (Marijuana Moment)

• DEA Asks Federal Court To Dismiss Marijuana Rescheduling Lawsuit—Again (Marijuana Moment)

• Lawsuit Filed Against the DEA and Attorney General to Compel Issuance of Licenses to Manufacture Marijuana for Clinical Trials and Potential FDA Approval (MAPS)

• The Future Of The Cannabis Industry After The Pandemic (Forbes)

• “No Evidence” that Adult-Use Marijuana Laws Influence Cannabis Use by Teens (NORML)

• What History Teaches Us About Shaping South Africa's New Cannabis Laws (TalkingDrugs)

• How pagans used cannabis at Christmastime (Leafly)

LSD

• ‘We have a drug problem’: Camp Lejeune starts random LSD testing (Stars and Stripes)

• Silo Pharma Announces Plans for a Phase 2B Investigator Lead Study Using Psychedelics Psilocybin and Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (“LSD”) to Treat Parkinson’s Disease (Psilocybin Alpha)

• I'm an 'LSD Specialist' Who Sells Acid to Oxford University Students (VICE)

Magic Mushrooms

• Oregon Governor Takes First Step To Regulate Psilocybin Mushroom Therapy By Forming New Board (Marijuana Moment)

• Understanding The Psilocybin Supply Chain: Every Production Method Explained (Yahoo! Finance)

MDMA

• Numinus and MAPS Public Benefit Corporation announce collaboration agreement to seek approval of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD single-arm, open-label trial (Psilocybin Alpha)

DMT

• Entheon Biomedical Announces CRO Agreement with CHDR for Phase 1 Clinical Trial; Centre for Human Drug Research Led DMT Study to Start in 2021 (Psilocybin Alpha)

Ayahuasca

• Coronavirus and Evolving Ceremonial Practice Among Ayahuasca Practitioners in the US (Chacruna)

• Ayahuasca, Healing and Cognitive Justice (Chacruna)

5-MeO-DMT

• Mike Tyson credits toad venom for his return to boxing ring (New York Post)

Salvia Divinorum

• New research shows a link between Salvinorin A and the DMN (The Psychedelic Scientist)

Novel Psychoactive Substances

• CaaMTech Researchers Synthesize and Structurally Characterize Deprocin Hydrochloride (Psilocybin Alpha)

• Tackling the Global Issue of New Psychoactive Substances (News-Medical.net)

Ketamine

• Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy – Online? (Psychedelic Support)

Miscellaneous

• Where Will Psychedelics and Other Drugs Be Decriminalized Next? (DoubleBlind)

• 'Sistine Chapel of the ancients' rock art discovered in remote Amazon forest (The Guardian)

• New Study Identifies Link Between Personality Traits And Psychedelic Experiences (IFLScience)

• Leaked FBI Report: Drug Sellers Practice Harm Reduction (Filter)

• What will 'psychedelic therapy' look like when it's legalized? (Big Think)

• How Do American Psychiatrists View Psychedelics? (Psychedelic Support)

• How Are Psychedelics Companies Generating Revenue Before Legalization? (Microdose)

• Psychedelics, Masculinity, and Mental Health (Sam Woolfe)

• “Please Write Up Your Work!”: Laura Archera Huxley as a Psychedelic Pioneer (Chacruna)

• A Sub-Perceptual Promise: Can Microdosing Solve Mainstream Problems? (The Third Wave)

Think Wilder is reader-supported. If you enjoyed this week’s update, please consider helping out by becoming a patron, making a one-time donation, or sharing this post with a friend. Thank you for your support.

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.

U.N. Reclassifies Cannabis as a Less Dangerous Drug

Isabella Kwai, writing for The New York Times:

A United Nations commission voted on Wednesday to remove cannabis for medicinal purposes from a category of the world’s most dangerous drugs, a highly anticipated and long-delayed decision that could clear the way for an expansion of marijuana research and medical use.

The vote by the Commission for Narcotic Drugs, which is based in Vienna and includes 53 member states, considered a series of recommendations from the World Health Organization on reclassifying cannabis and its derivatives. But attention centered on a key recommendation to remove cannabis from Schedule IV of the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs — where it was listed alongside dangerous and highly addictive opioids like heroin.

Experts say that the vote will have no immediate impact on loosening international controls because governments will still have jurisdiction over how to classify cannabis. But many countries look to global conventions for guidance, and United Nations recognition is a symbolic win for advocates of drug policy change who say that international law is out of date.

Although this is essentially a symbolic gesture, it’s still a huge sign of progress and good things to come. Now that the United Nations has made this move, we can expect to see more countries relax their approach to cannabis—and hopefully other drugs as well.

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