LANCET CALLS FOR LSD IN LABS

"Use more psychedelic drugs," is not advice you would expect from
your GP, but that is the call from an influential US medical journal
to researchers.

An editorial in the Lancet says that the "demonisation of psychedelic
drugs as a social evil" has stifled vital medical research that would
lead to a better understanding of the brain and better treatments for
conditions such as depression.

The journal's editor Richard Horton said he was not advocating
recreational drug use, but championed the benefits of researchers
studying the effects of drugs such as LSD and Ecstasy by using them
themselves in the lab.

"The blanket ban on psychedelic drugs enforced in many countries
continues to hinder safe and controlled investigation, in a medical
environment, of their potential benefits," said the editorial,
"...criminalisation of these agents has also led to an excessively
cautious approach to further research into their therapeutic benefits."

Dr Horton told Guardian Unlimited that important advances were made
by researchers using psychedelic drugs on themselves, but that these
studies were stifled by the post-1960s anti-drug backlash. "Our very
earliest understanding of the neurochemistry of the brain came from
studying LSD-like compounds. Those same researchers were also taking
those drugs, not recreationally, but as experiments on themselves.
This was immensely important work."

"The whole taboo around recreational drug use can make the study of
these drugs very difficult," he said, "We need to get a balance
between these social taboos and what's best for patients."

Dr Horton's comments echo those from psychiatrist Ben Sessa on the
100th birthday of Albert Hoffmann, who discovered LSD. "It is as if a
whole generation of psychiatrists have had this systematically erased
from their education," he told the Guardian in January.

"But for the generation who trained in the 50s and 60s, this really
was going to be the next big thing. Thousands of books and papers
were written, but then it all went silent. My generation has never
heard of it. It's almost as if there has been an active demonisation."

Some anti-drug charities and politicians argue that medical research
on illegal drugs should remain taboo because it risks sending a
confused message to potential users. Rick Doblin of the
Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies in Sarasota,
Florida rejects this argument. "The idea that by contradicting the
exaggerated propaganda you are somehow sending the wrong message is
false," he said, "Kids know when they are being told something that
is way exaggerated, but then they don't know what is the truth."

The journal's call comes at a crucial moment, he said, because
several small studies of the medicinal effects of illegal drugs are
under way. "I think it is a tremendously courageous step."

MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy, has shown promise in treating
post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety in cancer patients, while
LSD and psylocibin - the active ingredient in magic mushrooms - are
being investigated as treatments from cluster headaches. Sativex, a
treatment for multiple sclerosis derived from cannabis, is already
available in Canada.