Kennedy hearings; U.S. Embassy in Peru & Costa Rica Ministry of Health warn against ayahuasca use; Proposed legislation would change OR & CO psilocybin programs
Plus: New state bills and surveying study materials from 20 years of psychedelics research
Happy Friday and welcome back to The Microdose, an independent journalism newsletter brought to you by the U.C. Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics.
Psychedelics proponent and HHS Secretary nominee Kennedy sits for hearings
This week, the U.S. Senate Finance and Health Committees held hearings to consider Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination as the country’s Secretary of Health and Human Services. Kennedy did not directly mention psychedelics, though he has previously vowed to prioritize psychedelics if confirmed to the post. He did, however, disparage SSRIs in his finance committee hearing, saying that “members of my family…have had a much worse time getting off SSRIs” than heroin. Across the two hearings, Democrats mainly focused on Kennedy’s statements on vaccines, including false claims about COVID-19 and opposing the development of COVID-19 vaccines. Senator Tina Smith (D-MN) called out a 2023 appearance on Bill Maher’s podcast in which Kennedy said antidepressants cause school shootings. (Many experts say this is not the case.)
Meanwhile, Kennedy’s main opposition from Republicans comes from former Vice President Mike Pence, whose political advocacy organization Advancing American Freedom has pledged hundreds of thousands of dollars to oppose Kennedy’s nomination. On Monday, the group posted on X calling out Kennedy’s support of “dangerous health-related conspiracy theories, abortion-on-demand, and increasing access to psychedelics.”
The Senate Finance Committee is expected to vote on Kennedy’s nomination next week, according to the New York Times.
U.S. Embassy in Peru warns against ayahuasca use, as does the Costa Rica Ministry of Health
Last week, the U.S. Embassy in Peru issued a notice to all citizens visiting Peru, recommending they do “NOT ingest or use traditional hallucinogens, often referred to as ayahuasca or kambo.” The notice claimed that several citizens had “died or experienced severe illness, including mental health episodes” after ayahuasca and kambo use, as well as “being sexually assaulted, injured, or robbed while under the influence of these dangerous substances at ‘healing’ or ‘retreat’ centers.” Over the last year, there have been news reports of a murder at a Peruvian retreat and at least one death at an ayahuasca and kambo retreat in Australia, but we’ve found no publicly available reports of deaths due to ayahuasca use at Peruvian retreats. The Microdose reached out to the U.S. Embassy in Peru for further information but did not receive a reply.
Meanwhile, the Costa Rica Ministry of Health has also published a warning about the use and advertisement of ayahuasca, reminding people that the DMT it contains is a controlled drug subject to federal regulation. It also warns against unauthorized use of ibogaine, and encourages people to avoid the drug and to report users of either drug to health authorities.
Proposed legislation would change Oregon and Colorado’s psilocybin programs
So far, Oregon and Colorado are the only two states with state-legal psilocybin programs — and this week, representatives in each state have introduced legislation that would affect those programs.
In Oregon, new legislation proposed by the non-profit group Healing Advocacy Fund and introduced by representative Dacia Grayber (D) would make changes to the state’s psilocybin program. Currently, even if licensed psilocybin facilitators have other types of expertise — say, they’re a doctor or therapist — they can only act as a facilitator during psilocybin sessions, and they cannot provide medical or psychotherapy services, leaving some professionals unsure whether they can talk about their facilitation work with clients at all. The new bill, House Bill 2387, would protect health professionals from being disciplined by the state’s professional regulatory boards. It would also require the Oregon Health Authority to keep investigations of complaints confidential. It also contracts the size of the Oregon Psilocybin Advisory Board from its current 14 to 16 members down to nine, and requires one board seat to be held by a licensed service center operator and another to be held by a licensed facilitator. Finally, the bill also proposes that all psilocybin products contain information about its psilocin content, in addition to its psilocybin content, to provide more information about the potency of the products. Psilocybin is a prodrug of psilocin, which means that the human body metabolizes psilocybin into psilocin, which is the active compound capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier. Because most psilocybin mushrooms also contain psilocin, knowing the quantity of psilocybin alone is not sufficient to predict the strength of a dose.
In Colorado, state senators have introduced Senate Bill 076, which would prohibit psilocybin manufacturers and other license holders from making or distributing psilocybin gummies, chocolates, or any other formulation that includes added flavor or sweetener. According to Westword, the bill was created in collaboration with the non-profit group One Chance To Grow Up, whose mission is to “protect kids from THC.” Representatives from the organization recently spoke at a Colorado Springs city council meeting in favor of the city adopting stricter rules governing the state’s natural medicine program.
In a statement to The Microdose, Tasia Poinsatte, Colorado State Director of Healing Advocacy Fund, said the Colorado bill was unnecessary given state regulators’ “comprehensive guardrails” for its psilocybin program, and that decreasing product types could cause issues for some clients. “There are also documented issues around nausea and sometimes vomiting for some people who consume whole or powdered psilocybin mushrooms,” she said. “We are concerned that limiting product types in Colorado could cause significant discomfort for these participants, distracting them from the psychedelic experience itself and possibly limiting the efficacy of the therapy.” Limiting options could also decrease options to study their effects, she said. “We are better served by allowing a range of options within the supervised therapeutic framework and gathering data on what is most effective, rather than preemptively limiting product types that are safe and may prove beneficial.”
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The State of Psychedelics: New bills in Connecticut and Rhode Island; City of Tacoma, Washington deprioritizes enforcement of psilocybin laws
Connecticut State Representative Josh Elliott (D) introduced House Bill 6380 last week, an incredibly succinct one-sentence bill proposing that the state’s general statute “be amended to decriminalize the possession of psilocybin.” Meanwhile, a group of Rhode Island representatives introduced H5186, a similar bill that exempts possession and home cultivation of psilocybin from the state’s controlled substances laws and directs the state’s Department of Health to establish rules for prescribing medical psilocybin, should the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approve the drug.
Earlier this month, we reported that a city councilmember in Tacoma, Washington proposed a resolution declaring the investigation, arrest, and prosecution of people using, possessing, growing, transporting, or distributing entheogenic plants or fungi as the lowest law enforcement priority. On Tuesday evening, the council voted unanimously to pass that resolution.
Surveying study materials from 20 years of psychedelics research
Over the last two decades, psychedelic research has seen a resurgence — and in recent years, researchers have found that factors like mindset and physical environment can affect research results. In a new review paper published in Psychedelic Medicine, researchers reviewed experimental procedures from 18 studies. They report on how safety information is conveyed, as well as what expectations might be influenced by elements like the physical environment. “For instance, materials that emphasize the potential for transformative mystical-type subjective experiences may increase the likelihood that participants will report such mystical-type outcomes during the course of their experience (process expectancy) and/or when integrating the experience (outcome expectancy),” the authors write. Those expectations, in turn, could affect study results, “either by enhancing reported benefits or leading to disappointment if certain expectations are not realized.”
Overall, the researchers identified several themes across study materials. Unsurprisingly, protocols often touched on physical and biological safety, such as health screenings before studies, as well as psychological safety and well-being before, during, and after sessions. In these protocols, the researchers also identified practices that could unwittingly introduce expectancies. For example, some sites used religious or spiritual practices like chanting or administering psilocybin in a ceremonial “vessel,” and some study session rooms used religious or spiritual iconography, like mandalas or statues of Buddha, whereas others received psilocybin in a more conventional medical environment, “with hospital beds on wheels, vital sign monitoring machines, cabinets with medical supplies, and wheelchairs present.” The interaction between setting and mindset, the authors note, are ripe for future study: Would participants feel more at ease in more medical-looking settings, or more on edge? How could that affect study outcomes?
“As the field of psychedelic research develops, standardization and systematic manipulation and measurement of study parameters will hopefully continue to progress,” they conclude. “There is substantial room for improvement in reporting and standardization”.
Awe is likely a contributor to the healing potential of psychedelics, reports Salon.
For VICE, journalist Mattha Busby profiles Danny Goler, a psychonaut who says he’s “forged friendly relationships with extraterrestrial beings” and uncovered a secret code by staring into laser reflections on his DMT trips, and has amassed a following including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. advisor Charles Einstein.
A Libertarian Institute profile of MAPS founder Rick Doblin characterizes him as “a character straight out of an Ayn Rand novel.”
Mycologist and chemist Willy Myco has released “a step-by-step instructional video on how to synthesize LSD,” according to DoubleBlind. Myco, a popular YouTuber, had been trying for years to make a video legally, and his chance materialized when he was invited by the University of Okara in Pakistan to give a lecture about LSD synthesis and film the result, which Myco is now selling video of via his Patreon account.
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