Pubdate: Sat, 15 Apr 2006
Source: Lancet, The (UK)
Copyright: 2006 The Lancet Ltd
Contact:  http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/231
Related: The Guardian article about the editorial 
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n468/a06.html

REVIVING RESEARCH INTO PSYCHEDELIC DRUGS

That psychedelic drugs, such as LSD and MDMA (ecstasy), can be 
effective treatments for various psychiatric illnesses is an old 
idea. Once considered wonder drugs for their effects on anxiety, 
depression, alcoholism, and other mental illnesses, they have been 
effectively banished from medical practice after legal rulings banned 
their sale and use. Although such bans were largely put in place to 
quash concerns about rampant recreational drug use fuelling the 
counter cultures of the 1960s and 1980s (LSD and MDMA, respectively), 
criminalisation of these agents has also led to an excessively 
cautious approach to further research into their therapeutic benefits.

So do illicit drugs have therapeutic benefits that outweigh their 
substantial social harm? The evidence is scant.

But the case of a man who emerged from a decade-long period of 
intensive MDMA use "during which he is estimated to have taken 40000 
pills" with no signs of the profound neurotoxicity that has long been 
feared to result from even limited consumption of ecstasy, has 
re-energised calls for more research into the real side-effects, and 
therapeutic potential, of psychedelic drugs.

Although some small-scale research projects using LSD, MDMA, and the 
active components of cannabis are now underway, the blanket ban on 
psychedelic drugs enforced in many countries continues to hinder safe 
and controlled investigation, in a medical environment, of their 
potential benefits.

Exaggerated risks of harm have contributed to the demonisation of 
psychedelic drugs as a social evil. But although this dangerous 
reputation "generated and perpetuated by the often disproportionately 
stiff penalties for their use" is helpful for law enforcement, it 
does not correspond to the evidence.

Rather, the social prescription against psychedelic drugs that 
hinders properly controlled research into their effects and 
side-effects is largely based on social and legal, as opposed to 
scientific, concerns.

To maximise research into therapeutic benefits without exacerbating 
real social harms a legal structure that recognises this distinction 
is sorely needed. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake