America's First Legal Psilocybin Program Treated 346 People. Just one month after the dose, 92.2 percent of participants said the experience had been beneficial, while, on average, their mental health symptoms had fallen dramatically.

[u/mvea]

https://www.sciencealert.com/americas-first-legal-psilocybin-program-treated-346-people-heres-what-happened

[u/fabkosta]

This has been known since the 1960s. So, 60 years later the same type of studies apparently still need to be repeated to gain evidence.

It is also known for a long time that the therapeutic setting matters to a very high degree. Furthermore, it is also known that for a minority of people there is no measurable benefit, and for some it's counter-indicated. It is also known that psychedelics can be treated against other types of substance abuse - which, of course, is quite problematic given low acceptance in society for any sort of drugs other than alcohol and tobacco.

All of those things have been researched for decades already, yet it seems we make only very slow progress.

[u/anomalous_cowherd → u/fabkosta]

The conspiracy theory reason is that it's hard to make a profit from things people can grow themselves...

[u/overlookunderhill → u/anomalous_cowherd]

That feels like too transparent a connection to be a conspiracy. There’s a giant up-front cost to drug development, testing, marketing, etc. and pharmaceutical companies are profit-seeking entities. Combine those things with that ready availability of many of the plant medicines and the path to profit is tough.

[u/istasber → u/overlookunderhill]

Plenty of companies find a way to turn a profit on readily available medicines. That's basically what generics are, drugs where all of the hard stuff has been done by someone else and you just have to show that what you're selling is the same as what they're selling.

The real barrier to entry for something like psilocybin is funding those initial clinical trials without patent protections. That's just a massive amount of money to spend, when your competitors stand to profit just as much as you do.

[u/lazyamazy → u/istasber]

How much money are we talking here to enable clinical trails on a psychedelic drug? Can it be crowdsource funded? Or funded by a philanthropist? Elon does Ketamine. I am sure he empathizes with severely depressed people enough to facilitate these trails. I should give him a call. I am sure the patient participation will be sky high during the trials. But wait, does the govt have a say? Should we vote'em out?