Catherine Tallon-Baudry

What’s to be done? Changing the international classifications enshrined in UN schedules would be difficult, suggests Nutt, but there are things that individual governments could do to help neuroscience, such as giving hospitals a general permission to use banned substances, the same way as UK hospitals are already allowed to use heroin. Amanda Feilding, founder and director of the Beckley Foundation which supports research into psychoactive substances, is more optimistic about the chance to turn global drugs policies around. “The past two months have been an incredibly busy and productive time for global drug policy reform and scientific research into psychedelic drugs. Never in my 15 years as director of the Beckley Foundation have I seen such rapid progress Psychedelic molecule: Albert Hofmann, the inventor and first user of LSD, with a model of the molecule he called his ‘problem child’. Far from seeing it as a recreational drug, Hofmann hoped that it would enable people to gain a deeper understanding of consciousness and spirituality. (Photo: istockphoto.com.)