Post: Colorado’s mushroom ‘therapy’ unmasked | Denver Gazette

(iStock image) A news report out of the nation’s capital this week all but dismisses the psychedelic drug ecstasy as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder — casting serious doubt on a key pretext for legalizing dangerous hallucinogens in Colorado in 2022.

Beltway insider Politico reported that an expert advisory committee of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration decided in a 9-2 vote that pharmaceutical Lykos Therapeutics’ proposed use of ecstasy, or MDMA, is not an effective PTSD treatment.

The panel also voted 10-1 in finding the treatment’s risks outweigh benefits. It found that the tests the drugmaker had conducted to advocate for FDA approval were riddled with bias and other errors.

“If the FDA follows its advisers, as it typically does, it could upend a burgeoning industry already banking on using a variety of mind-altering drugs to treat disorders ranging from depression to anxiety,” Politico concluded.

That “burgeoning industry” was banking on Colorado, too, when it turned on the hard-sell for Proposition 122 a couple of years ago.

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That was the statewide ballot measure, approved by voters 54% to 46%, that legalized “magic mushrooms” — psilocybin and other hallucinogens — on the cynical premise of providing therapy to sufferers of wide-ranging psychological and emotional disorders. A favorite pitch of proponents was helping military veterans with PTSD.

Now, it turns out the most informed authorities in medical science don’t regard the hallucinogens as having much therapeutic value after all.

The news comes too late to stop Prop. 122’s implementation. The state is scheduled to begin issuing licenses to dispense the drugs by the end of this year. But it’s not too late for regulators to tighten the screws.For one thing, the state could require that only medical professionals such as psychiatrists can have licenses — since the drugs are supposedly for therapy. The ballot proposal was vague on that matter.Of course, Prop. 122’s backers never really cared about therapy in the first place. That was just a ruse to win over an unsuspecting public.Prop. 122 was really about spawning a market for […]

Colorado’s mushroom ‘therapy’ unmasked | Denver Gazette