The push for psychedelic legal reform in the US has gained some serious wins over the last few years, with states such as Colorado and Oregon decriminalizing natural psychedelics for personal use and legalizing the therapeutic use of psychedelic medicines. California and Massachusetts may follow in their footsteps.
Across the pond – in the UK and the rest of Europe – change is slower and less widespread. Nevertheless, calls for reform are becoming more mainstream and accepted.
Calls for Psychedelic Reform in the UK
The UK has been a pioneering force in the field of psychedelic science, with important and groundbreaking clinical trials being conducted by researchers at Imperial College London and King’s College London. But despite these studies showing the efficacy and safety of psychedelics in the treatment of various mental health conditions, the law tells a different story.
Under UK law, all classic psychedelics are categorized as Class A drugs, meaning they are treated as the most dangerous, with the harshest penalties for possession and distribution. Because of this disparity between evidence and law, there has been a push for psychedelic reform in the country. Change could be on the horizon.
Since psilocybin is a Class A drug, clinical trials are expensive and complicated to carry out. Regulatory barriers to research are, therefore, increasingly being scrutinized. The conversation around the rescheduling of psilocybin (reclassifying it as a Class B drug) is becoming mainstream. This policy change would significantly reduce the time and costs associated with gaining a Home Office license to lawfully possess and prescribe psilocybin for research.
UK Parliament also held a debate on access to psilocybin treatments in May of this year. During the debate, Labour Party MP Charlotte Nichols called for the government to reschedule psilocybin, based on the scientific evidence available. Conservative Party MP Crispin Blunt – who is Chair of the Centre for Evidence-Based Drug Policy (previously called the Conservative Drug Policy Reform Group) – expressed the same view at the debate.
Back in 2017, the UK Government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs looked into whether the Home Office should do more to facilitate research involving Class A drugs, but the Council’s recommendations for reform did not lead to any substantive policy changes. This is despite the fact that the majority of MPs in the UK support drug policy reform. During the debate this May, Nichols noted her disappointment with how slow the UK was in enacting psychedelic law reform.
Psilocybin Access Rights (PAR) is a UK advocacy group that is calling for psilocybin to be reclassified as a Class B drug, to make it accessible for medical and scientific research, and for doctors to prescribe it to patients who may benefit. Since launching their campaign in August 2022, PAR has petitioned the government to enact this change (which was rejected) and run the UK’s first ad campaign asking the public to consider the question “Could magic mushrooms be medicine?” They also encourage people to write letters to their MPs demanding policy reform.
In 2021, the British psychedelic researchers Ben Sessa and Robin Carhart-Harris forecasted that MDMA and psilocybin will be licensed in the UK as medicines by 2025. But given that this is a year away now, many would argue this is an overly optimistic prediction.
The Push for Psychedelic Reform in the EU
Members of the European Parliament also believe psychedelic reform is necessary. In May of this year, Ten MEPs announced the creation of a new Action Group for the Medical Use of Psychedelics. The group includes MEPs from Czechia, Belgium, Malta, Portugal, Luxembourg, Finland, and Poland – all of whom are passionate about developing more evidence-based EU policies and regulations surrounding psychedelic treatments.
MEP Mikuláš Peksa has stated, “Millions of Europeans are in need of better treatments. We need to ensure that novel psychedelic treatments are being considered, as the science behind them highlights their immense potential.” And in terms of what the Action Group sets out to achieve, MEP Sara Cerdas says that it is “bringing together MPs across the political spectrum”, with the aim of promoting “equitable access to affordable and safe novel psychedelic-assisted treatments in the EU.”
Currently, there is wide variation in drug policy throughout Europe. For example, the Netherlands is well known for its relaxed attitude towards cannabis and magic truffles, and Portugal decriminalized the possession and consumption of all drugs back in 2001. On the other hand, many European nations classify psychedelics as highly dangerous substances.
In a policy paper, PAREA argues we should redefine ‘high unmet clinical needs’, which currently focuses on life-threatening or severely debilitating conditions for which no treatment exists. While this covers key aspects of unmet needs, PAREA states it overlooks mental health and substance use disorders, which, while not immediately life-threatening, impose massive burdens on individuals, healthcare systems, society, and the economy. Drawing attention to these unmet needs is one way that advocacy groups in Europe seek to persuade policymakers to relax the laws surrounding psychedelic treatments.
In February this year, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), experts from the EU regulatory network, and representatives from the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) published a joint commentary in The Lancet that acknowledged the therapeutic potential of psychedelics. The authors raised their concerns about classic psychedelics being highly controlled substances. They suggest that the UN’s classification of them as Schedule 1 in the Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971 may need to change:
“Classic psychedelics do not show potential for addiction, and the justification for the UN schedule 1 classification (i.e., drugs with “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse”), as adopted in the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, should be questioned by evidence of the therapeutic potential of psychedelics.”
Policy Changes Elsewhere in the World Could Influence Europe
In June of this year, Australia became the first country in the world to legalize and regulate MDMA and psilocybin as medical treatments for conditions including PTSD and depression.. David Baddock, CEO of the UK-based organization Drug Science, believes that this announcement could have a positive knock-on effect in other countries. He told Euronews:
“Australia’s decision means we’re going to have access to a wealth of information we haven’t had until now – namely, real trials and results across a range of patients. It’s our opportunity to gather evidence and ultimately elevate our research so that, hopefully, treatments like this can become more widely available”.
The psychedelic therapies being conducted in Australia, as well as in certain states in the US, may show the kind of success that will convince policymakers in the UK and the rest of Europe that psychedelic therapy is safe and effective. Baddock notes, “We have to bear in mind the therapies being trialed in Australia are done in an extremely controlled setting. Patients will undergo clinical assessment before it’s even considered as a treatment, and there are tight regulations that the psychotherapists involved must abide by”.
Yet despite these safety protocols, many scientists have voiced their concerns that research has not yet conclusively shown these drugs to be safe or effective. Some believe the move by Australia was, therefore, rushed. The psychiatry professor Steve Kisley wrote an editorial in which he strongly disagreed with Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) decision to legalize psychedelics, saying that it is “ahead of the available scientific evidence,” especially because “unresolved issues remain surrounding relapse, long-term safety and the challenges of conducting randomized controlled trials in this area.”
Even the TGA’s own commissioned report into psychedelics and mental health stated that while psychedelics “may show promise,” studies on them tended to be low quality and that the overall evidence base needed to be stronger. Many experts believe that more needs to be understood about the risks of psychedelics, how best to mitigate them, and how to effectively deal with harmful effects when they occur.
However, making the roll-out of psychedelic treatments safer for patients would ideally involve a relaxing of drug laws in the UK and the EU. If European countries want to improve their understanding of psychedelics of mental health, before medical legalization takes place, then bigger and better trials would be needed. This would ensure that any decision to make psychedelic medicines legal and widely available isn’t rushed. Rescheduling psilocybin and MDMA would play a crucial role in facilitating this kind of research. Psychedelic reforms in the UK and EU can be successful, but this ultimately depends on how evidence-based these policy changes will be.
Written by Sam Woolfe
Sam Woolfe is a freelance writer and blogger based in London. His main areas of focus related to psychedelics include philosophy, ethics, mental health, policy, and risks. You can find him on Twitter and LinkedIn, and read more of his work at samwoolfe.com.