Love your advocacy of a balanced level the playing field and balance the equities point of view. Hope you'll take another look at the patent situation. Griffiths is the exception. "Now you have mouths to feed. If you take the position that there should be no psychedelic patents, you’re starving a lot of mouths." No patents is not the only alternative position. The current situation promotes bullying and predation. It prioritizes protecting what is and inhibits collaborating on what could be. I think this limits growth in this rapidly expanding area of inquiry. To continue your metaphor, overly protecting existing mouths occurs at the expense of foreclosing on the possibility of an order of magnitude growth in the number of new mouths fostering disruptive innovation in the space. It puts up a "do not enter" fence, where what is needed is a "welcome mat."
To be clear, I'm against bad patents. Patenting prior art (what has been done before) is a no-no. But good patents can further and reward innovation. No doubt, there are downsides to patents and the patent system. That is true with good patents as well. The point I'm trying to make is not to think in absolutes about patents in psychedelics, good or bad. There are benefits to having patents in psychedelics just as in any other space that requires innovation. Patents fund research. Those are the mouths. Research and clinical trials are expensive.
Regarding the comment below re: MAPS, remember that MAPS took 20+ years to get MDMA research to the finish line. A point I think is worth considering.
Why does no one use the verbiage of the 9th Amendment and depending on the State Constitution as why these laws on the books are just unconstitutional and therefore null. Think about the United States of America the Land of the Free have a "Right to try" law. Uh, per the language in the first two paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence and the 9th Amendment I have a Right to try because I exist. The regulations if any should exist should be related to purity of the product labeling. The government has no power to protect you from yourself at best it can require vendors to be honest about their products and the risks involved in using them so you as an adult can make an informed decision and therefore informed consent to consume a substance that alters your consciousness. Is it not our Right as people who at the very core of our Rights is Self ownership be allowed to decide for themselves if they alter their consciousness or not? No one has a right to compel another person to go along with their opinion under threat of violence. In a society supposedly living under a government whose powers come from the equal consent of its Citizens, how can it claim power over you that your neighbors do not possess over you? I cannot delegate authority to someone else that I do not possess. So I ask, why has no one made this argument before the government? Is it because profit would be hurt suddenly having millions of Citizens no longer being extorted for engaging in victimless activities?
I appreciate that you shared your views Matt. My responses will generally be counter points. Without your interview Jane and Matt there would be no debate.
Matt Zorn: Capital allows you to accelerate the research process, and it creates a body of research that I can cite in proceedings against the DEA. Psychedelic patents cannot be uniformly bad.
MAPS has been and is a great benefit to the whole movement. All we have to do is look at the history of pharma to see that Capital/Profits do not lead to good outcomes.
Capital can't be the only way to fund this investigation. This whole process should remain in the public domain and publicly funded. Highways and municipal water systems are publicly funded. This needs to be to. No profit should be extracted from this process. Nor should control be in the hands of Pharma.
It seems the DEA the legal system and fear are used to herd and guide the whole process toward pharma control and exploitation.
Matt Zorn observes: Now you have mouths to feed.
Who mouths are these?
Matt Zorn: Capital and patents, for better or worse, are a currency in this space.
Historically they are not the currency in this space. World wide they have always been in the province of the first peoples. This still works. Drug abuse and addiction are rare if at all in traditional indigenous communities. One example is Bolivia and coca leaf. The coca plant can be and is used to make cocaine a very addictive substance. That is not how the Andean Indians use the plant. They are no more addicted to the leaf than we are to food.
The people we should study are those who have a long history with psycho active plants and learn from them how the use it and the culture necessary for its efficacy.
That didn't happen with tobacco. History tells a sorry tale of what happens when profit motivates tobacco use, leaving the people to suffer and die as a result.
Matt Zorn: Psychedelic patents cannot be uniformly bad.
That doesn't mean they are universally good. It may remain debatable but the open source and copy left models could be used to license these outcomes. If done this way, no freedom of information request is necessary. All research remains in the public domain and can be accessed by anyone any time. This path to open public control should be seriously explored.
Matt Zorn: EPA, there's a lot of litigation and moneyed interests, and that develops discourse and understanding.
The EPA is deeply flawed and captured agency. If this was not the case, our water, air and food would not be polluted with toxins. And when I say food, I mean it is poisoned in the field by chemical toxins like roundup/glyphosate but many others as well. Glyphosate is considered a carcinogen by many. EPA doesn't think so. The EPA should in my opinion follow the Precautionary Principal. Stop glyphosate use until proven safe!
The above is another reason EPA is an especially bad example. Though it might be a great example as to what happens when profit/captial motivates, drives so called innovation, research and the regulatory process.
Matt,
Love your advocacy of a balanced level the playing field and balance the equities point of view. Hope you'll take another look at the patent situation. Griffiths is the exception. "Now you have mouths to feed. If you take the position that there should be no psychedelic patents, you’re starving a lot of mouths." No patents is not the only alternative position. The current situation promotes bullying and predation. It prioritizes protecting what is and inhibits collaborating on what could be. I think this limits growth in this rapidly expanding area of inquiry. To continue your metaphor, overly protecting existing mouths occurs at the expense of foreclosing on the possibility of an order of magnitude growth in the number of new mouths fostering disruptive innovation in the space. It puts up a "do not enter" fence, where what is needed is a "welcome mat."
Thanks for the note.
To be clear, I'm against bad patents. Patenting prior art (what has been done before) is a no-no. But good patents can further and reward innovation. No doubt, there are downsides to patents and the patent system. That is true with good patents as well. The point I'm trying to make is not to think in absolutes about patents in psychedelics, good or bad. There are benefits to having patents in psychedelics just as in any other space that requires innovation. Patents fund research. Those are the mouths. Research and clinical trials are expensive.
Regarding the comment below re: MAPS, remember that MAPS took 20+ years to get MDMA research to the finish line. A point I think is worth considering.
Why does no one use the verbiage of the 9th Amendment and depending on the State Constitution as why these laws on the books are just unconstitutional and therefore null. Think about the United States of America the Land of the Free have a "Right to try" law. Uh, per the language in the first two paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence and the 9th Amendment I have a Right to try because I exist. The regulations if any should exist should be related to purity of the product labeling. The government has no power to protect you from yourself at best it can require vendors to be honest about their products and the risks involved in using them so you as an adult can make an informed decision and therefore informed consent to consume a substance that alters your consciousness. Is it not our Right as people who at the very core of our Rights is Self ownership be allowed to decide for themselves if they alter their consciousness or not? No one has a right to compel another person to go along with their opinion under threat of violence. In a society supposedly living under a government whose powers come from the equal consent of its Citizens, how can it claim power over you that your neighbors do not possess over you? I cannot delegate authority to someone else that I do not possess. So I ask, why has no one made this argument before the government? Is it because profit would be hurt suddenly having millions of Citizens no longer being extorted for engaging in victimless activities?
Wow, Matt is so balanced on the issues. Great to hear this perspective.
Thank you Jane C. Hu and Matt Dorn,
I appreciate that you shared your views Matt. My responses will generally be counter points. Without your interview Jane and Matt there would be no debate.
Matt Zorn: Capital allows you to accelerate the research process, and it creates a body of research that I can cite in proceedings against the DEA. Psychedelic patents cannot be uniformly bad.
MAPS has been and is a great benefit to the whole movement. All we have to do is look at the history of pharma to see that Capital/Profits do not lead to good outcomes.
Here is one example of a model (Monsanto a profit driven company) that broke Percy Schmiser: Percy Schmeiser vs. Monsanto. https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/magazine/entry/percy_schmeiser_vs._monsanto/
Capital can't be the only way to fund this investigation. This whole process should remain in the public domain and publicly funded. Highways and municipal water systems are publicly funded. This needs to be to. No profit should be extracted from this process. Nor should control be in the hands of Pharma.
It seems the DEA the legal system and fear are used to herd and guide the whole process toward pharma control and exploitation.
Matt Zorn observes: Now you have mouths to feed.
Who mouths are these?
Matt Zorn: Capital and patents, for better or worse, are a currency in this space.
Historically they are not the currency in this space. World wide they have always been in the province of the first peoples. This still works. Drug abuse and addiction are rare if at all in traditional indigenous communities. One example is Bolivia and coca leaf. The coca plant can be and is used to make cocaine a very addictive substance. That is not how the Andean Indians use the plant. They are no more addicted to the leaf than we are to food.
The people we should study are those who have a long history with psycho active plants and learn from them how the use it and the culture necessary for its efficacy.
That didn't happen with tobacco. History tells a sorry tale of what happens when profit motivates tobacco use, leaving the people to suffer and die as a result.
Matt Zorn: Psychedelic patents cannot be uniformly bad.
That doesn't mean they are universally good. It may remain debatable but the open source and copy left models could be used to license these outcomes. If done this way, no freedom of information request is necessary. All research remains in the public domain and can be accessed by anyone any time. This path to open public control should be seriously explored.
Matt Zorn: EPA, there's a lot of litigation and moneyed interests, and that develops discourse and understanding.
The EPA is deeply flawed and captured agency. If this was not the case, our water, air and food would not be polluted with toxins. And when I say food, I mean it is poisoned in the field by chemical toxins like roundup/glyphosate but many others as well. Glyphosate is considered a carcinogen by many. EPA doesn't think so. The EPA should in my opinion follow the Precautionary Principal. Stop glyphosate use until proven safe!
Also https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC440734/ glyphosate attack on this pathway effects all living systems on the planet.
The above is another reason EPA is an especially bad example. Though it might be a great example as to what happens when profit/captial motivates, drives so called innovation, research and the regulatory process.