On May 26 I taught what I expect will be my last Continuing Legal Education class for a long time, if not longer. Here’s a link to the program. I’m sharing the PowerPoint presentation here:

If there are Second Amendment Sanctuaries maybe there should be Psychedelic Sanctuaries. If necessary we could get a Constitutional amendment to recognize freedom of consciousness, the predicate to all other freedoms as the premise of wisdom, the premise of our system of government.

I’m going to try a new approach here, prompted by what I read as concern in the psychedelic sector media about the prospect of market capture through intellectual property rights (which I assume could be a collaborative efforts to some degree among the pharmaceutical interests, governmental prohibitionists, and conservative social actors). I don’t know if… Read More Strategic realism

In this episode of the New Amsterdam Psychedelic Law Show I speak with São Paulo-based attorney Guilherme Kfouri as part of my quest to connect with psychedelic lawyers all over the world. Guilherme describes evolutions in Brazilian drug law, including recognition of the indigenous use of ayahusaca, the spread of ayahuasca use into urban environments,… Read More Psychedelics in Brazil: legitimacy and legality

In this episode of The New Amsterdam Psychedelic Law Show (an experimental title I may use for these video blogposts going forward), Calgary-based attorney David Wood discusses the legal structure under which individuals currently possess and use psilocybin without criminal penalties in Canada. The basic mechanism is an exemption from the Controlled Drugs and Substances… Read More How legal use of psilocybin works under Canadian federal law

In this post I propose that the moment calls for safe and equitable access to psychedelics immediately – as in now, not in a year or more after a state department of health enacts regulations and issues licenses – and therefore a new form of psychedelic law reform legislation is necessary. Three different models of… Read More Psychedelic legalization now

but not cannabis exceptionalism?

I’m thinking that the essential policy task in legalizing psychedelics is protecting local markets.

I watched a National Geographic video the other night in which a frog swallowed a poisonous newt: after a minute or two the frog died and the newt crawled out of the corpse and went about its business. I also just finished re-reading Brave New World after thirtysomething years. I read as much as I… Read More Are psychedelics a poisonous newt?