The Beckley Foundation

Psychedelic Healing: Can Psychedelics Reinvent Medicine and Society (2011 International Drug Policy Reform Conference)

admin — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 13:18:26 +0000

Psychedelics can trigger insight, but behavior change takes time and a changed environment to take root. Through personal stories, participants will explore the concept and process of change in psychedelic therapy. How do psychedelics redefine medicine and science, and how can we effectively reintegrate them into contemporary society?

Speakers:

Neal Goldsmith
Psychotherapist and Counselor

Rick Doblin
Executive Director
Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies

Jim Fadiman
Co-Founder
Institute for Transpersonal Psychology

Marilyn Howell
Author, Honor Thy Daughter

Amanda Feilding
Executive Director
Beckley Foundation

Julie Holland
Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry
NYU School of Medicine

Drug policy and the public good: evidence for Effective interventions

admin — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 17:08:16 +0000

Vol 379 January 7, 2012

By John Strang, Thomas Babor, Jonathan Caulkins, Benedikt Fischer, David Foxcroft, Keith Humphreys

Debates about which policy initiatives can prevent or reduce the damage that illicit drugs cause to the public good arerarely informed by scientifi c evidence. Fortunately, evidence-based interventions are increasingly being identifi ed thatare capable of making drugs less available, reducing violence in drug markets, lessening misuse of legal pharmaceuticals,preventing drug use initiation in young people, and reducing drug use and its consequences in established drug users.We review relevant evidence and outline the likely eff ects of fuller implementation of existing interventions. Thereasoning behind the fi nal decisions for action might be of a non-scientifi c nature, focused more on what the publicand policy-makers deem of value. Nevertheless, important opportunities exist for science to inform these deliberationsand guide the selection of policies that maximise the public good.

Key messages

• Drug policy should aim to promote the public good by improving individual and public health, neighbourhood safety, and community and family cohesion, and by
reducing crime.

• The eff ectiveness of most drug supply control policies is unknown because little assessment has been done, and very little evidence exists for the eff ectiveness of alternative development programmes in source countries.

• Supply controls can result in higher drug prices, which can reduce drug initiation and use but these changes can be diffi cult to maintain.

• Wide-scale arrests and imprisonments have restricted eff ectiveness, but drug testing of individuals under criminal justice supervision, accompanied by specific, immediate, and brief sentences (eg, overnight), produce substantial reductions in drug use and off ending.

• Prescription regimens minimise but do not eliminate non-medical use of psychoactive prescription drugs. Prescription monitoring systems can reduce inappropriate prescribing.

• Screening and brief intervention programmes have, on average, only small eff ects, but can be widely applied and are probably cost-effective.

• The collective value of school, family, and community prevention programmes is appraised diff erently by diff erent stakeholders.

• The provision of opiate substitution therapy for addicted individuals has strong evidence of eff ectiveness, although poor quality of provision reduces benefit. Peer-based self-help organisations are strongly championed and widely available, but have been poorly researched until the past two decades.

• Health and social services for drug users covering a range of treatments, including needle and syringe exchange programmes, improve drug users’ health and benefi t the broader community by reducing transmission of and mortality due to infectious disease.

Click here for link to full article from www.thelancet.com

The drug laws are counter-productive, and David Cameron knows it

admin — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 12:18:19 +0000

David Cameron knows the drug laws aren’t working; his failure to change them is simple cowardice

Tom Chivers, February 15 2012

Let’s play a game of make-believe. Pretend you’re a Home Office minister. One of your European neighbours employs a radical public health policy and, 10 years later, has seen huge improvements in the measurements of all the relevant health outcomes. The evidence for the efficacy of that health policy is widespread; the British Medical Journal and World Health Organisation have both issued major pieces of research, along with one of the leading journals in the field, which say that in general the policy has positive effects. Further, the proposed policy is significantly cheaper than the existing one, and has the added bonus of giving more responsibility and freedom to individual citizens. What do you do?

Well, obviously, if the policy is the decriminalisation of drug use, then you reject it out of hand.

Yesterday we learnt, via the AFP, that Portugal has reported a 50 per cent drop in “problem” drug users in the decade since they decriminalised all drugs. Dr Joao Goulao, the president of the country’s Institute of Drugs and Drug Addiction, says that “There is no doubt that the phenomenon of addiction is in decline in Portugal,” although he is quick to point out that other factors, including “treatment and risk reduction policies”, have played their part as well as legalisation. Of course, as the AFP story notes, those treatment and risk policies are part of Portugal’s health-based approach to drug use, and taken together the policies have led to a “spectacular” drop in infections like HIV and hepatitis among intravenous drug users, and a significant drop in crime. And last week, a report by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction praised the Portuguese approach, saying it, unlike other drug policies, is or at least attempts to be “internally consistent… pragmatic and innovative… transparent, coherent and well-structured”, and saying that its success in reducing use is a blow to the theory that “decriminalisation, or a less punitive approach, leads to increased use” of drugs.

I write a close variant of this piece about once every three months. Some new piece of research is published suggesting that drug prohibition laws do more harm than good, or some high-profile former politician or policeman or lawyer comes out saying that police resources are being wasted on an unwinnable war, or yet another triumphant statistic gets trumpeted out of Portugal. I’ve written about a major BMJ piece, backed by the Transform Drugs Policy Foundation, which says “prohibition on production, supply, and use of certain drugs has not only failed to deliver its intended goals but has been counterproductive”; a WHO reportsaying “countries with stringent user-level illegal drug policies did not have lower levels of use than countries with liberal ones”, and a systematic review in the International Journal of Drug Policy last yearwhich found that “increasing drug law enforcement is unlikely to reduce drug market violence. Instead, the existing evidence base suggests that gun violence and high homicide rates may be an inevitable consequence of drug prohibition and that disrupting drug markets can paradoxically increase violence.”

But every time, the Home Office deadbats with bland statement on the lines of: drugs are bad, mmmkay. This time it’s: “We have no intention of liberalising our drugs laws. Drugs are illegal because they are harmful – they destroy lives and cause untold misery to families and communities. Those caught in the cycle of dependency must be supported to live drug free lives, but giving people a green light to possess drugs through decriminalisation is clearly not the answer. Through the cross-government drug strategy, we are taking action through tough enforcement, both at home and abroad, alongside introducing a temporary control power and robust treatment programmes that lead people into drug free recovery.”

If you managed to read all the way through that, you’ll notice it says nothing whatsoever about the evidence, despite my specifically asking for a response to the BMJ, WHO and IJDP studies and the Portugal experience. The Home Office, and the Government, is deliberately ignoring the reality of the drug laws’ failure.

No one claims that decriminalisation, or rather a cleverly instituted, multi-layer regulation of drug policy as suggested by Transform, will be a magic bullet. But the evidence, at least all the evidence I’m aware of, suggests that it will improve matters, or at the very least not make them worse, if carried out intelligently. What’s more, David Cameron knows this, or at least he knew this in 2005, when as a contender for the Conservative Party leadership he called for “alternative ways – including the possibility of legalisation and regulation – to tackle the global drugs dilemma”. He said: “Politicians attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator by posturing with tough policies and calling for crackdown after crackdown. Drugs policy has been failing for decades.” Nick Clegg in 2002 also called for “decriminalising the use of certain substances”and “partially decriminalising the sale of cannabis”, and “legalis[ing] the use of drugs for purposes other than medical or scientific ones”, ie recreational use.

But, as we’ve seen, once politicians get in power they get scared. Like their predecessors, this Government is a bunch of political cowards.

Quebrando o Tabu – ‘Breaking The Taboo’, Complete Film

admin — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 16:57:23 +0000

Breaking the Taboo,2011

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Guatemala President to Propose Legalizing Drugs in Central America

admin — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:57:25 +0000

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina said Saturday he will propose legalizing drugs in Central America in an upcoming meeting with the region’s leaders.

Perez Molina said in a radio interview that his proposal would include decriminalizing the transportation of drugs through the area.

“I want to bring this discussion to the table,” he said. “It wouldn’t be a crime to transport, to move drugs. It would all have to be regulated.”

Perez Molina, a former army general who took office last month, didn’t give any other details about his proposal, mention specific drugs or say when the next meeting with Central American leaders will be.

He said he will bring the subject up with Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes when Funes visits Monday.

The Guatemalan president said the war on drugs and all the money and technology received from the U.S. has not diminished drug trafficking in the area.

“There was talk of the success of Plan Colombia but all it did was neutralize big cartels,” Perez Molina said of a U.S. initiative supporting Colombia’s fight against leftist rebels and far-right militias involved in the drug trade.

Perez Molina also blamed drug cartels for rampant violence in Guatemala, which has a homicide rate of 41 murders per 100,000 people.

The president took office pledging to wield an “iron fist” against crime.

Authorities say both the Zetas and the Sinaloa drug cartels are running and processing drugs in Guatemala and may be competing for territory, especially in the province of Peten near the border with Mexico.

12 Latin American leaders call for exploration of legal drug regulation

admin — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:22:28 +0000

10/02/2012

See original article here at Transform

A remarkable and almost unreported event took place at the beginning of December last year at the somewhat obscure, 13th summit of the Tuxtla Mechanism for Dialogue. (See here For more on the Mechanism.)

It was reported in El Universal on 6 Dec ‘Frenar consumo de droga o regularlo, exigen paises a EU’ and in the Washington Post on 19 Dec ‘Latin American leaders assail US drug ‘market’‘, but has had no international pick up beyond.

A dozen Latin American countries issued a joint statement on organised crime and drug trafficking (here is the original Spanish text on the Mexican Government website). Point 7 is translated here:

“What would be desirable, would be a significant reduction in the demand for illegal drugs. Nevertheless, if that is not possible, as recent experience demonstrates, the authorities of the consuming countries ought then to explore the possible alternatives to eliminate the exorbitant profits of the criminals, including regulatory or market oriented options to this end. Thus, the transit of substances that continue provoking high levels of crime and violence in Latin American and Caribbean nations will be avoided.”

What is remarkable is that the call to reduce demand (that no one would take issue with in principle) comes with the caveat that there is little evidence that this is possible, thereby leaving the call to explore alternatives – including ‘regulatory or market oriented options’. This is in effect, an unambiguous call to legalise and regulate drugs. This is a fairly standard construction of the issue (similar to that adopted by Calderon recently) to avoid using the loaded term of ‘legalisation’ (something Colombian President Santos has been less hesitant about).

The statement is a clear acknowledgement of the often unspoken understanding that the war on drugs is fuelling much of the violence and chaos in Latin America. This then is a very clear call on consumer countries to take the lead in ending the war and replacing it with a legal system of regulation and control.

The summit was attended by the Presidents of Guatemala, Alvaro Colom; Honduras, Porfirio Lobo; Mexico, Felipe Calderon; Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega; Panama, Ricardo Martinelli; the Dominican Republic, Leonel Fernandez; and the First Vice President of Costa Rica, Alfio Piva Messer. Also present were the Foreign Ministers of Belize, Wilfred Elrington; Colombia, Maria Angela Holguin; and El Salvador, Hugo Martinez. Chilean President Sebastián Piñera was also present as a special guest.

Following President Santos’s lead, twelve countries have now effcetively called for an end to the war on drugs. The significance of this is great, but the silence following it has been deafening. Perhaps because there was no pro-active media promotion of the statement, it has not been reported anywhere nearly as widely as last years ground breaking Global Commission report. That report – suypported by a global media campaign – was however, made up almost entirely of former presidents. The Tuxtla group are all incumbents.

This is a game changer. It is difficult to see how for example, the Commission on Narcotic Drugs can go through its standard motions with this Declaration on the table – it a direct challenge to the restrictions placed on signatory states experimenting with alternatives to prohibtion. The same is likely to be the case for any other transnational events based on entrenched prohibtionist orthodoxy. The issue ought now to be high on the agenda of any and all summits involving Latin American countries – G20, Summit of the Americas and so on.

Whilst this is a step change in the level of challenge to the prohibitionist orthodoxy, there are problems with it too. It is a construction of the issue fully intended to take the heat off producer and transit countries and place the blame for their problems squarely at the door of the US and other major consumer countries. This is entirely understandable given the historical and geopolitical context of contemporary prohibition. However, it raises two important issues:

Firstly, Are the Latin Americans seriously going to wait until the US leads them to a brave new world of peace? And secondly, the fact is that ALL countries (including the Latin Americans) are signatories to the Conventions upon which the drug war is founded. Whilst the geopolitical pressure for non-super powers to sign up and adhere to the Conventions is huge, it is nonetheless a fact that they are complicit in maintaining the legal infrastructure of the war on drugs and pursue the war with a ferocity unseen in other parts of the world. Their position would be more credible if they were to make moves nationally, regionally, and at the UN, to de-securitise drugs and develop and implement policies that adhere to human rights and public health norms.

That said, this is still a watershed moment in calling time on the war on drugs and those countries that are taking the lead deserve great credit for going on the record publicly (albeit quietly). We would encourage readers of this blog to contact their elected representatives to inform them of this development and to take the time to praise those leaders who were there, for making this statement.

Magic mushrooms, international law and the failed ‘war on drugs’, Amanda Feilding

admin — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:15:46 +0000

Recent research suggesting potential therapeutic benefits of psilocybin focuses attention on the need to reform drug laws

It’s been a busy fortnight. First the publication of two major peer-reviewed research papers about magic mushrooms that attracted worldwide publicity. Then off to Prague for an international drugs policy symposium. And just last week, news of a large grant for our next collaborative study with Imperial College. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I established the Beckley Foundation some 14 years ago as a think tank on drugs policy. It was apparent even then that the “war on drugs” had failed. A 1997 report by the United Nations Drugs Control Programme put the value of the global trade in illicit drugs at around $400bn. Recent UN figures show that global production of opium (used mostly to make heroin) rose by almost 80% between 1998 and 2009. The market in illicit drugs is the third largest market in the world, after food and oil.

The health statistics are equally grim. In some countries – including some within the EU – more than three-quarters of intravenous drug users are infected with hepatitis C. Worldwide, there are several million non-fatal drug overdoses each year. Drug wars themselves also claim a dreadful toll: more than 47,000 deaths in the past five years for Mexico alone, according to the latest estimates.

However, while it is clear that existing policies are crying out for reform, what is less clear is how to foster the required political will.

The Beckley Foundation is the only organisation to combine rigorous scientific research with detailed policy analysis in an attempt to address that question. Our premise is simple: drugs policies should focus on health, harm reduction and cost-effectiveness, and should be based on the best available scientific evidence. That means trying out and evaluating a variety of policy ideas, as well as researching the physical effects of drugs.

Drugs policies around the world are based on three UN conventions, dating from 1961, 1971 and 1988. The conventions allow limited production and possession of drugs, but only for scientific and therapeutic use. In particular, parties to the 1988 Convention (which include the vast majority of UN member states) are obliged to criminalise the production, distribution, sale, purchase and possession of listed drugs other than for approved scientific and medical purposes. The result is the criminalisation of millions of people guilty of nothing other than personal drug use.

It is important to realise that an illegal market is a completely unregulated market. The evidence indicates that decriminalising personal possession and use saves valuable police time and criminal justice resources, and does not increase the prevalence of drug use. Moreover, because users are no longer regarded as criminals, their access to education and treatment is improved and the harm caused by problem drug use is reduced. That is why, together with the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy Reform, we organised a meeting of government leaders, policy makers and experts at the House of Lords in November at which we launched a Global Initiative for Drug Policy Reform.

At that meeting, we presented a report commissioned by the Beckley Foundation into how the UN conventions could be amended to allow countries more freedom to create national policies based on their individual needs. We heard fascinating evidence from the Czech Republic, Portugal and elsewhere about their experiences of moving – within the “wiggle room” permitted by the UN conventions – towards policies based on public health, education and harm reduction rather than criminal enforcement.

At the symposium in Prague last week, a group of international experts again discussed possible reform mechanisms: partial decriminalisation under the existing conventions, and explicit decriminalisation or strict government regulation under amended conventions. We also considered problems caused by the current legal regime, such as the difficulty Bolivia faces in trying to get an exemption to permit the millennia-old indigenous tradition of chewing coca leaves.

The Beckley Foundation’s focus on health-oriented policies demands a research programme to gather relevant evidence. That evidence also affords profound insights into how the brain works and potential therapeutic uses of psychoactive drugs.

Which brings me back to those recent scientific papers, products of a collaboration between the Beckley Foundation and Professor David Nutt’s department at Imperial College London. Using the latest functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques, the team looked at the brains of subjects as they received an intravenous dose of psilocybin, a psychedelic drug found in magic mushrooms. The papers were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the British Journal of Psychiatry.

Many users of psychedelics report the experience as a consciousness-expanding one, and conventional wisdom suggests that such drugs should increase brain activity and blood flow to the brain.

Instead, the research in PNAS showed that psilocybin decreased blood flow to specific regions of the brain that act as “connector hubs”, where information converges and from where it is disseminated. In the paper, we suggest that these hubs normally facilitate efficient communication between brain regions by filtering out the majority of input in order to avoid over-stimulation and confusion. But the hubs also constrain brain activity by forcing traffic to use a limited number of well-worn routes. Psilocybin appears to lift some of these constraints, allowing a freer and more fluid state of consciousness.

In the second study, subjects were given cues to recall positive events in their lives. With psilocybin, their memories were extremely vivid, almost as if they were reliving the events rather than just imagining them.

The findings suggest potential uses for psilocybin in the treatment of depression, a condition characterised by rigidly pessimistic thinking patterns. These fixated patterns are associated with overactivity in the medial prefrontal cortex – one of the same connector hubs deactivated by psilocybin. Psilocybin may also be a useful adjunct to psychotherapy, helping patients who are stuck in negative thought patterns to access distant memories and work through them.

The newly published results are exciting enough to have generated funding for a major study into psilocybin and depression, which will begin shortly. Watch this space.

Amanda Feilding is director of the Beckley Foundation, a think tank working for health-oriented drug policies based on scientific research

Amanda Feilding & the Beckley in the Guardian, February 2012

admin — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:32:56 +0000

Magic mushrooms, international law and the failed ‘war on drugs’

Amanda Feilding, 7 February 2012

This article was originally published in the Guardian. Click here for full article

However, while it is clear that existing policies are crying out for reform, what is less clear is how to foster the required political will.

Which brings me back to those recent scientific papers, products of a collaboration between the Beckley Foundation and Professor David Nutt’s department at Imperial College London. Using the latest functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques, the team looked at the brains of subjects as they received an intravenous dose of psilocybin, a psychedelic drug found in magic mushrooms. The papers werepublished in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the British Journal of Psychiatry.

Many users of psychedelics report the experience as a consciousness-expanding one, and conventional wisdom suggests that such drugs should increase brain activity and blood flow to the brain.

The newly published results are exciting enough to have generated funding for a major study into psilocybin and depression, which will begin shortly. Watch this space.

Amanda Feilding is director of the Beckley Foundation, a think tank working for health-oriented drug policies based on scientific research

The Beckley Foundation Submits Evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee, February 2012

admin — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:40:54 +0000

The Beckley Foundation warmly welcomed the Select Committee’s inquiry into drug policy and its invitation to present submissions. Improving drug policy is one of the key policy challenges of our time.

The inquiry commenced on 24^th January 2012 & began with oral evidence from Sir Richard Branson and Ruth Dreifuss, former President of Switzerland, both of whom are commissioners on the Global Commission on Drug Policy (GCDP).

The Beckley Foundation, which has been at the heart of the global initiative for drug policy reform for over a decade, seeks to change drug policy to reflect a more health-orientated and evidence-based approach. The Chairman, Keith Vaz is hopeful that the inquiry will form a platform for balanced and well-reasoned debate.

It is worth noting that many politicians have continued to distance themselves from the term ‘war on drugs’, while moving cautiously towards more of a harm reductionist position. The evidence that is due to be presented will urge policy makers to go one step further in protecting those at risk to the imminent dangers of prohibited substances by reforming the current model and being aware that an illegal market is an unregulated market.

Exciting new findings produced through the Beckley-Imperial College Psychedelic Research Programme

admin — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:23:49 +0000

Published in the British Journal of Psychiatry

Implications for psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study with psilocybin, February 2012

Background

Psilocybin is a classic psychedelic drug that has a history of use in psychotherapy. One of the rationales for its use was that it aids emotional insight by lowering psychological defences.

Aims

To test the hypothesis that psilocybin facilitates access to personal memories and emotions by comparing subjective and neural responses to positive autobiographical memories under psilocybin and placebo.

Method

Ten healthy participants received two functional magnetic resonance imaging scans (2 mg intravenous psilocybin v. intravenous saline), separated by approximately 7 days, during which they viewed two different sets of 15 positive autobiographical memory cues. Participants viewed each cue for 6 s and then closed their eyes for 16 s and imagined re-experiencing the event. Activations during this recollection period were compared with an equivalent period of eyes-closed rest. We split the recollection period into an early phase (first 8 s) and a late phase (last 8 s) for analysis.

Results

Robust activations to the memories were seen in limbic and striatal regions in the early phase and the medial prefrontal cortex in the late phase in both conditions (P<0.001, whole brain cluster correction), but there were additional visual and other sensory cortical activations in the late phase under psilocybin that were absent under placebo. Ratings of memory vividness and visual imagery were significantly higher after psilocybin (P<0.05) and there was a significant positive correlation between vividness and subjective well-being at follow-up (P<0.01).

Conclusions

Evidence that psilocybin enhances autobiographical recollection implies that it may be useful in psychotherapy either as a tool to facilitate the recall of salient memories or to reverse negative cognitive biases.