Cory Booker Insists On 'Safe And Effective Treatments' With Psychedelics, Urges Reform

While working on enacting the marijuana reform in Congress this year, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) is also calling for a reform to broaden therapeutic access to psychedelics for people with mental health conditions.

Booker recently called attention to the fact that while psychedelics still remain a Schedule I drug that limits research, ongoing studies are bringing about “massive breakthroughs.” 

Most noticeably, psilocybin and MDMA “are showing incredible results for helping people with PTSD, with trauma, even with anxiety and depression,” the Senator explained.

“The war on drugs, we know, was a failure. It wasn’t a war on drugs. It was a war on people, especially vulnerable people. Well now, we see that some drugs, like certain psychedelics, can help vulnerable people deal with their addiction, their trauma, their anxiety, their depression and more,” Booker said.

On July 2022, bipartisan lawmakers including Senators Cory Booker (D-NY), Rand Paul (R-KY) and Reps Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and Nancy Mace (R-SC)- sent companion bills clarifying that federal Right to Try (RTT) laws give terminally-ill patients access to Schedule I substances including marijuana and psychedelics. 

Booker reaffirmed in his video appearance that the bill’s aim is to “open up more avenues to take drugs that are now banned and make them accessible, especially for people that are suffering.”

Pressure at a national level for psychedelics reform, along with advanced clinical trials showing positive mental health outcomes, seems to have moved the needle toward discussion table in President Biden’s office. 

A recent letter on behalf of the federal Health and Human Services (HHS) department acknowledges that mental health and substance use crises require the potential of psychedelic-assisted therapies to be further explored, and that the agency would establish a task force to do so.

Photo courtesy of Chones and Cannabis_Pic on Shutterstock and Wikimedia Commons.