Tag: psilocybin

California Governor Newsom Vetoes Psychedelics Legalization, But Calls For New Bill On Therapeutic Access Next Year

The governor of California has vetoed a bill to legalize certain psychedelics and create a pathway to regulated access—a move that comes at a time when two states have already enacted comprehensive psychedelics policy reform and as two campaigns are working to put the issue on California’s 2024 ballot.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D)—who was one of the most prominent and earliest lawmakers to call for an end to the war on drugs as mayor of San Francisco and later push for the legalization of cannabis as lieutenant governor of California—vetoed the bill, SB 58, from Sen. Scott Wiener (D) on Saturday.

In a veto message, the governor caveated that he wants the legislature to send him a new bill next year establishing guidelines for regulated therapeutic access to psychedelics and also consider a “potential” framework for broader decriminalization in the future. But at this stage, he’s unwilling to let the reform be enacted with his signature.

“Both peer-reviewed science and powerful personal anecdotes lead me to support new opportunities to address mental health through psychedelic medicines like those addressed in this bill,” Newsom said in a veto message on Saturday. “Psychedelics have proven to relieve people suffering from certain conditions such as depression, PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and other addictive personality traits. This is an exciting frontier and California will be on the front-end of leading it.”

“California should immediately begin work to set up regulated treatment guidelines—replete with dosing information, therapeutic guidelines, rules to prevent against exploitation during guided treatments, and medical clearance of no underlying psychoses,” he continued.  “Unfortunately, this bill would decriminalize possession prior to these guidelines going into place, and I cannot sign it.”

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California Governor Signs Bills To Let Doctors Prescribe Psilocybin And MDMA If They’re Federally Rescheduled And To Change Marijuana Testing Rules

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has signed a bill that would allow doctors to immediately start prescribing certain currently illicit drugs like psilocybin and MDMA if they’re federally rescheduled, and he also approved separate legislation to amend THC variance testing requirements for marijuana.

The governor signed off on the measures—which are just two of more than a dozen cannabis and drug policy reform proposals on his desk—on Saturday.

AB 1021, sponsored by Assemblymembers Buffy Wicks (D), Isaac Bryan (D) and Corey Jackson (D), says that, if the federal government reschedules any Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), California health professionals will automatically be able to legally prescribe and dispense it.

This could be especially relevant to the psychedelics psilocybin and MDMA, which have been designated as breakthrough therapies by the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and are expected to be approved for medical use as early as next year.

Following a recent Phase 3 clinical trial, a peer-reviewed study published in the journal Nature last month found that treatment with MDMA reduced symptoms in patients with moderate to severe PTSD. The findings mean federal regulators could consider approving the drug for wider use as soon as next year.

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Detroit Police Raid Psilocybin Church After Newspaper Feature

A church that purportedly uses entheogenic plants like psilocybin mushrooms as a holy sacrament was raided by officers with the Detroit Police Department Friday just two days after having a newspaper article about them published in the Detroit Metro Times.

According to a follow up article by the Detroit Metro Times, officers confiscated about $700,000 Friday in psilocybin mushroom products as well as ayahuasca and iboga from Soul Tribes International Ministries at 15000 Southfield Freeway in Detroit. Officers with the Detroit Police Department confirmed the raid took place to the Metro Times but would not comment on what was taken or any other details about what happened there.

Owner of Soul Tribes, ‘Shaman Shu’ (formerly named Robert Shumake) said 15 officers from DPD showed up armed and masked, seized the mushroom products and ordered a closure of the church. Shu told the outlet he believes the actions taken by police were in violation of Proposal E, a 2021 city initiative that decriminalized the use of psychedelic plants and fungi like psilocybin.

“They stole ancient sacrament. It was prayed over and meditated over. It’s a healing sacrament… They blocked my property down without due process. You can’t do that,” Shu said to the Metro Times. “They think we’re not a church. But that’s why the federal government was created, to separate church and state so that cities do not opine on what churches are [and] what ministries are. We’re a ministry and a religious organization.”

The original article said Soul Tribes was operating a “sacrament center” within the church where they sold dried psilocybin fruits, capsules and gummies to church members based on language in Proposal E that included using psilocybin therapeutically under the supervision of religious leaders, though they remain illegal under Michigan state law.

Regardless, Proposal E did not allow for the sale of entheogenic plants and fungi, which is likely where Soul Tribes ran into trouble with the police. The Metro Times asked for comment from the Mayor of Detroit’s office regarding the raid and whether or not DPD’s actions were sanctioned by the City, to which they received the following comment from Doug Baker, the city’s assistant corporation counsel:

“The Detroit Police Department worked in close coordination with the city’s law department and building safety, engineering and environmental department in preparing this enforcement action,” Baker said. “It is the law department’s position that this local ordinance, despite its intent, does not override state law, which considers psilocybin to be a controlled substance. Most importantly, the city ordinance itself does not allow for the sale or distribution of psilocybin.”

DPD Sgt. for media relations, Jordan Hall, told the outlet, “My understanding was that [the raid] was due to a lack of licensing and the amount of substances that were distributed.”

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America’s First ‘Shroom Clinic’ Opens In Oregon

America’s first licensed health clinic to sell ‘magic mushrooms’ opened in June in Oregon and has been swamped with surging demand. The waitlist for the clinic exceeds 3,000 people, some of whom are searching for ways to treat depression and PTSD. 

No prescription or referral is needed for Epic Healing Eugene, but customers must be over 21 to receive psilocybin services. 

AP News said some customers complained the ‘mind-bending’ experience is too costly: 

“A client can wind up paying over $2,000, which helps cover service center expenses, a facilitator and lab-tested psilocybin. Annual licenses for service centers and growers cost $10,000, with a half-price discount for veterans.” 

Even though The Oregon Psychiatric Physicians Association opposed legalizing psilocybin in 2020, voters thought otherwise and also decriminalized the possession of hard drugs. 

Epic Healing Eugene’s owner Cathy Jonas told AP that providing legal access to mushrooms is a ‘dream come true’: 

“The plant medicines have communicated to me that I’m supposed to be doing this thing.”

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Depressed by the War on Drugs? Magic Mushrooms May Help.

Hallucinogenic drugs like psilocybin-containing magic mushrooms are closely linked in the public imagination with hippies and pleasure-seeking. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with pleasure-seeking (we’ll see about hippies), growing evidence suggests that, properly used, these drugs may be just as effective for healing minds as they are at blowing them. A recently published study reports that, among other uses, psilocybin is a very effective treatment for depression.

“In a randomized, placebo-controlled, 6-week trial in 104 adults, a 25-mg dose of psilocybin administered with psychological support was associated with a rapid and sustained antidepressant effect, measured as change in depressive symptom scores, compared with active placebo,” according to the authors, led by Dr. Charles L. Raison of Wisconsin’s Usona Institute, of “Single-Dose Psilocybin Treatment for Major Depressive Disorder: A Randomized Clinical Trial,” published in August in the Journal of the American Medical Association. “No serious treatment-emergent adverse events occurred.”

The trial, conducted at different locations between December 2019 and June 2022, included participants between ages 21 and 65 who had been diagnosed with major depressive disorder of at least 60 days’ duration. Half of the participants were given a 25-mg dose of psilocybin and the other half were given niacin as a placebo, administered in identical capsules. The patients were assessed at eight days (the original end point of the study) and then at 43 days (the extended time frame).

Over the course of the study, “a single 25-mg dose of psilocybin administered with psychosocial support was associated with clinically and statistically significant reductions in depressive symptoms and improvement in measures of functional disability compared with a 100-mg dose of niacin placebo administered under an identical protocol.” The researchers also found a higher rate of sustained remission from depression symptoms among those who received psilocybin, “but the difference was not statistically significant.”

Adverse events potentially related to psilocybin consumption included one reported migraine, a headache, and one participant experiencing panic attack and paranoia. Nothing similar was found among the placebo group. As side effects go, that’s pretty mild and comparable to those linked to commonly used antidepressant drugs. Hence the finding that the study resulted in “no serious treatment-emergent adverse events.”

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CALIFORNIA MIGHT LEGALIZE MAGIC MUSHROOMS

A BILL TO legalize psychedelics is on a trip to California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office.

On Thursday, the California Senate gave final approval to a bill legalizing certain psychedelics for people who are 21 or older. If Newsom signs the bill, it will go into effect in 2025 and make it legal to possess or grow plant-based psychedelics, including psychedelic mushrooms.

Newsom has not said where he stands on the bill, but he has mostly been a critic against the war on drugs, having been a leading voice to legalize cannabis in California and reduce nonviolent offenses like drug crimes to misdemeanors rather than felonies. Last year, however, he vetoed a bill that would have allowed three California cities to operate supervised drug-consumption sites in efforts to combat fatal overdoses.

“We respect the legislative process and don’t typically comment on pending legislation,” a Newsom spokesperson told Marijuana Moment on Thursday. “The governor will evaluate the bill on its merits when it reaches his desk.”

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Psilocybin Associated With ‘Significantly’ Reduced Symptoms Of Major Depression After One Dose, American Medical Association Study Finds

People with major depression experienced “clinically significant sustained reduction” in their symptoms after just one dose of psilocybin, a new study published by the American Medical Association (AMA) found.

A team of 18 researchers from institutions including Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, NYU Langone Center for Psychedelic Medicine and San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center investigated the association, carrying out a randomized clinical trial involving 104 adults with major depressive disorder (MDD).

For the study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on Thursday, people with major depressive disorder were administered 25mg of synthetic psilocybin at 11 different clinics across the U.S. and monitored for changes in symptoms over the course of six weeks.

Within eight days, patients who received the psychedelic-assisted treatment, which was also accompanied by psychotherapy sessions, reported reduced depressive symptoms that “maintained across the 6-week follow-up period, without attenuation of the effect.”

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Magic mushroom dispensaries multiplying in southwestern Ontario, with no cap in sight

Flying in the face of local law enforcement, a chain of illegal brick-and-mortar magic mushroom dispensaries with locations in London, Windsor, and across the province is expanding to more local municipalities, strengthening a trend reminiscent of the pre-legalization cannabis market.

A recently opened storefront in St. Thomas is the latest move for FunGuyz, the entity that runs at least 13 dispensaries in Canada and one in Detroit, with a spokesperson suggesting other nearby small towns may be next.

“We’re looking at Sarnia, Strathroy, smaller cities surrounding London,” said a spokesperson who identified themselves only as Edgar and said the St. Thomas store opened last week.

In the past, different spokespeople for the company have all identified themselves as Edgar, or Edgars Gorbans. When asked if the name was real by CBC Windsor in early August, one spokesperson claiming to be named Edgar Gorbans said  “could be,” and “of course not.”

The latest expansion comes despite recent police raids at FunGuyz stores. London Police raided the local store in early July, whereas Windsor Police have raided their local store multiple times, and issued an arrest warrant for the store’s owner, who they identified as Edward Gorbans. 

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I Went to Rehab for Alcoholism 18 Times. Only Psychedelics Helped

I met Amanda at a pain therapy clinic in Zurich last December. She was sitting on a chair, hands folded neatly in her lap – she’d come here with her husband Tim for one of her regular visits to neurologist Livia Granata, one of the few specialists in Switzerland offering psychedelic therapy. 

British-born Amanda is 50 years old and has been an alcoholic for two decades. She also struggles with severe depression and anxiety stemming from childhood trauma. It took a lot for her to share her story, so she asked to be referred to on a first-name basis to protect her and her husband’s privacy. 

For the past seven years, Amanda hasn’t lived in her flat with her partner and their children, but outside on the balcony. She stays in an improvised shelter her husband made for her, only going in to use the toilet – and the pandemic only further tightened the grip her anxiety disorders have on her life.

A year ago, Amanda probably wouldn’t have shown up for this appointment at all, either cancelling at the last minute or simply letting it pass. Over the years, she’s been through too many treatments – experimental therapies that brought little to no relief. But in April 2022, she found her way to the clinic – and to the first treatment she felt ever truly worked.

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Psychoactive drug Psilocybin being studied for treatment of anorexia

Just a single dose of psilocybin was safe and tolerable for adult women with anorexia, according to a phase I open-label feasibility study.

After receiving a 25-mg dose of synthetic psilocybin given with therapist-delivered psychological support, none of the 10 participants experienced any significant changes in vital signs, ECGs, or suicidality during the week after dosing, reported Stephanie Knatz Peck, PhD, of the University of California San Diego, and colleagues.

Meeting the primary outcome, the treatment was also well-tolerated, with no serious adverse events reported amongst participants, who had an average body mass index (BMI) of 19.7, they noted in Nature Medicine.

As for changes in psychopathology — the secondary outcome of the early-stage trial — concerns about weight significantly decreased from baseline to 1 month after psilocybin treatment.

This improvement was also maintained up to 3 months after dosing. Likewise, shape concerns significantly dropped within the month after treatment, but this change was no longer significant at the 3-month mark.

Changes in eating concerns and dietary restraint didn’t reach statistical significance, but there was a trend towards an improvement in eating concerns at the 3-month follow-up.

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