The Brave New World of Legalized Psychedelics Is Here

The Brave New World of Legalized Psychedelics Is Already Here
And so are the profiteers. Get ready for Psychedelics Inc.
By Zoe Cormier MARCH 21, 2022

Illustration by Josh Gosfield.

f a single line endures from the psychedelic carnival of the 1960s, it’s probably Harvard psychologist and psychedelic cheerleader Timothy Leary’s catchphrase “Turn on, tune in, drop out. ” A call to wake up, reject the norms, defy authority, protest the war.

Today, there is a new psychedelic fervor, best captured in a very different sort of pithy quip: “I finally understood Bitcoin. ”

That was German billionaire Christian Angermayer, expounding last year on the ability of magic mushrooms to not only light up his world with colorful hallucinations but also facilitate a deeper understanding of cryptocurrencies, which are ideally suited to tax avoidance and money laundering.
Welcome to the strange new world of “psychedelic capitalism, ” where dozens of start-ups have already raised millions (and in some cases billions) of dollars to commercialize psilocybin (the psychedelic ingredient in magic mushrooms), DMT (found in the Amazonian brew ayahuasca), mescaline (peyote’s active component), and LSD—despite the fact that all of these “classic psychedelics” are still ranked as Schedule I drugs under the federal Controlled Substances Act. Manufacturing any of these drugs without a license can still land you a long prison sentence. But marketing one, even though they all remain illegal and none have passed all the clinical trials required for approval? That can make you a millionaire.

Fifty years ago, how was Leary rewarded for his proselytizing? Richard Nixon labeled him “the most dangerous man in America, ” Harvard stripped him of his academic position, and he was arrested more than 35 times.

Angermayer’s comeuppance? He is currently listed as one of the 200 richest people living in the UK, his incubator ATAI Life Sciences is valued at more than $2 billion, and he was given the honor of ringing the Nasdaq bell on Wall Street last June.
The days when mind-bending psychedelics were seen as appealing only to drug dealers, nut jobs, and hippies are over. Today, serious-minded people interested in randomized controlled trials and stock valuations are leading the charge.

The “psychedelic renaissance” we’ve awaited for half a century—the promised era when acid, shrooms, and peyote would be brought back into legitimate research and legal access—is finally here. But will it turn out to be worth the wait? Or the hype?
Because it’s not like we ever stopped enjoying them: In the West, hippies, scientists, “healers, ” and others have used psychedelics continuously for seven decades. And before we got our hands on them, Indigenous cultures used psychedelics for thousands of years as ritual sacraments. Now dozens of start-ups want to standardize, commercialize, alter, patent, and market these ancient compounds—and they stand to make a fortune doing so.

Will old-school profit-centered tactics bring down decades of dogged work by activists, scientists, and reformers to have these drugs reassessed for their virtues? Will we experience another nasty, research-smothering backlash?

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