Psychedelic drugs should be legally reclassified so that researchers can investigate their therapeutic potential.

Psychedelic drugs, especially lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and psilocybin, which is found in thePsilocybe genus of “magic” mushrooms that grow throughout the United Kingdom, were extensively used and researched in clinical psychiatry before their prohibition in 1967. Hundreds of papers, involving tens of thousands of patients, presented evidence for their use as psychotherapeutic catalysts of mentally beneficial change in many psychiatric disorders, problems of personality development, recidivistic behaviour, and existential anxiety.1 This research abruptly ended after 1967, when psychedelics were legally classified as schedule 1 drugs under the UKMisuse of Drugs Regulations and as class A drugs under the UKMisuse of Drugs Act 1971. Schedule 1 in the UK broadly mirrors schedule I of the 1971 United Nations Convention on Psychotropic Substances, adoption of which is a requirement of UN membership.2 This classification denoted psychedelic drugs as having no accepted medical use and the greatest potential for harm, despite the existence of research evidence to the contrary. Indeed, in 1992 John Ehrlichman, former assistant to Richard Nixon—the US president who intensified the “war on drugs” in the 1970s—notoriously admitted that the administration had lied about the harmful effects of drugs and had manipulated media coverage of them for political advantage.3Nearly 50 years later psychedelic drugs remain more legally restricted than heroin and cocaine, which are schedule 2, class A in the UK. But no evidence shows that psychedelic drugs are habit forming; little evidence shows that they are harmful in controlled settings; and much historical evidence has shown that they could have use in common psychiatric disorders. A growing number of organisations, most recently in Norway, are questioning the need for such draconian restrictions.4 Where’s the harm?