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Psychedelics Take Centre Stage in Massachusetts’ Local Media

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As some psychedelics advocates have vowed to redouble their state-by-state policy reform efforts in light of Lykos Therapeutics’ FDA rejection this summer, we’re renewing our own efforts to cover such activity.

Long-time readers will know that we launched our U.S. Psychedelic Legalization & Decriminalization Tracker back in 2021 and our Worldwide equivalent a short time later. More recently, we have tracked federal lobbying efforts among psychedelics companies and nonprofits and spoken to one of the loudest critics of a psychedelics-focused ballot question.

Today, I’m pleased to share the first in a series of dispatches from Jack Gorsline, a journalist who is quite literally ‘on the ground’ in the heart of this election season’s psychedelic policy reform battleground: Massachusetts.

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Coverage by Jack Gorsline for Psychedelic Alpha, edited by Josh Hardman.

(Boston, MA) With the countdown to the 2024 US election entering its final fortnight, psychedelic advocates around the world are keeping a close eye on the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where the outcome of a psychedelic-focused ballot initiative could either accelerate or further hinder the political progress of the psychedelic renaissance at large.

This week, Yes on 4’s Grassroots Campaign Director Emily Oneschuk and No on 4 coalition member Dr. Nassir Ghaemi convened for not one but two, live public debates. The first on Tuesday, October 15 on Boston Public Radio (GBH) and again on Thursday, October 17th on WBUR – NPR’s statewide affiliate station.

Dr. Ghaemi’s recent interview with Psychedelic Alpha founder Josh Hardman elicited a passionate and robust reaction from the psychedelic science community online, as many readers objected to Dr. Ghaemi’s rhetoric regarding psychedelics. Unsurprisingly, in both debates, Dr. Ghaemi doubled down on many of the talking points he’s previously espoused, and in particular emphasized his fear that decriminalizing psychedelics would be seriously harmful to the greater public’s health.

During the October 15 GBH debate, Dr. Ghaemi criticized the supposedly noble intentions of the Yes on 4 campaign, claiming the “ballot question is really not about mental health… [and] ignore[s] people with mental illnesses [like] schizophrenia, bipolar illness and some severe forms of depression.”

If passed, Ghaemi predicted that question 4 would “be harmful to public health by causing traffic accidents, [increasing] emergency room visits, and overwhelming our hospitals.”

Ghaemi Oneschuk Debate
Nassir Ghaemi and Emily Oneschuk during the GBH debate.

Later on in Tuesday’s debate, another misleading claim by Ghaemi caught the ire of longtime Boston Public Radio Co-host Jim Braude, who elicited a smattering of laughs from the live audience in doing so.

“If this ballot question passes,” Ghaemi claimed, again incorrectly “it becomes the law [and] the legislature can’t change [it].”

“That is totally untrue…” Braude quickly chimed in, adding that he would know, because he “used to work on ballot campaigns.”

“They can repeal it. They can amend it. They can leave it as is. It’s a law like any other legislation.”

Perhaps without realizing it, GBH co-host Margery Eagen’s persistent line of questioning regarding the boundaries of his hardline stance on psychedelics evoked a number of seemingly self-contradictory comments from Dr. Ghaemi on the merits of psychedelic science.

In Massachusetts Psychiatric Society’s October membership newsletter, Ghaemi said that he “would never become a psychedelics expert… I’d rather spend research time on something helpful, not a dead end.” However, by the end of Tuesday’s half-hour back-and-forth, Dr. Ghaemi ultimately conceded that clinical use of certain psychedelics could offer at least some medical benefits.

“I can’t speak for anybody [else]… but I think very low dose psilocybin in a regular, medically supervised setting with a medical… or mental health professional for PTSD alone… I think that’s possible.”

The Yes campaign’s Oneschuk particularly excelled at WBUR on Thursday morning – the broadcast of which was simulcast live on Boston’s WBZ Channel 5 news. However, during both nearly half-hour debates, Oneschuk offered a series of commanding rebuttals to a number of misleading statements made by Ghaemi.

When confronted by Dr. Ghaemi about the potential cardiotoxic side effects associated with the use of ibogaine, Oneschuk tactfully noted the unlikelihood of widespread use of ibogaine outside of clinical settings – at least in part due to the documented ecological complexities associated with iboga importation as making it “impossible” to grow in Massachusetts’ climate.

As for Ghaemi’s claims of future psychedelic harms to public health, Oneschuk brushed off his rhetoric as “fear-mongering.”

“My whole job in the Navy was assessing risk,” said Oneschuk, “I dealt with disposing bombs… I don’t take risk lightly, and I know that the benefit is worth it.”

Towards the end of Thursday’s debate on WBUR, Dr. Ghaemi was once again called out on the spot by Oneschuk – this time for incorrectly stating that Q4 would “specifically exclude medical professionals and mental health professionals” from obtaining licensure to provide psychedelic services.

“[Medical professionals] are not being excluded from this,” Oneschuk clarified, “That is straight misinformation that [Dr. Ghaemi] has been spreading.”

Up next for the Yes and No on 4 campaigns is a debate on Wednesday, October 23rd from 5:30-7:00 PM ET, hosted by the Harvard Chan School of Public Health’s Student Drug Policy Forum.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article misstated the date of the upcoming debate. In addition, Connor Kubeisy, a Policy Analyst for the Foundation for Drug Policy Solutions (FDPS) a graduate student at the Harvard Chan School and a member of the Student Drug Policy Forum, contacted Psychedelic Alpha to clarify that the club is not directly affiliated with the Foundation for Drug Policy Solutions (FDPS) or Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM).