Over the past few decades, attitudes towards psychedelic drugs have undergone a marked shift. In contrast to how they were perceived back in the 1960s and 70s, following the initial Leary-esque era wave of interest and their subsequent prohibition under the Controlled Substances Act (1970) where psychedelics moved far out of the mainstream, growing clinical and recreational use have provided a certain degree of legitimacy to psychedelic drugs. Ranging from microdosing strategies for Silicon Valley tech execs, to psilocybin mushrooms curing existential dread in terminally ill patients, to Netflix documentaries detailing the hallucinogenic experiences of many renowned comics, psychedelics are now unashamedly a part of the zeitgeist.

Bearing this in mind, alongside the fact that psychedelic drugs have a growing body of clinical evidence surrounding their use to suggest they are relatively safe-to-use molecules, it is becoming clear to many that this should catalyse a shift in how they are regulated.

This appears to be the premise of a recent report issued by the RAND Corporation. Published on June 27 of this year their report, Considering Alternatives to Psychedelic Drug Prohibition, details how the past decade has seen a resurgence in interest surrounding these drugs and how the policy landscape is changing to reflect this.

The purpose behind this report was to review and analyse the changing drug policy landscape in the U.S., assessing newly acquired data in a mixed-methods approach to determine the impacts of any hypothetical changes in policy. This was explicitly with a view to serve as a resource to policymakers, both within the U.S. and abroad (although with a focus on the former), participating in discussions around psychedelic drug laws.

One of the key points it seeks to drive home is that there are a number of different options when it comes to effectively regulating psychedelic drugs; ranging from full decriminalisation to prohibition, there is a full spectrum of regulatory approaches that could be considered by policymakers. And that is what we’ll dive into now.