Magic mushrooms may be on arc to legalization
The road to legalization, winding and long as it is, doesn’t pass through the Prairies.
Its most important intersections are in big cities, doctor’s offices and court rooms.
“Saskatchewan, unfortunately, is not really known as a bastion of drug freedom,” says Vancouver-based drug advocate Dana Larsen.
“There are certainly some great activists there who do some great work under really difficult circumstances but ... it hasn’t ever reached the same kind of level as we see in Vancouver or Toronto. I think culturally it’s a little harder of an environment for some reason.”
While he believes Canada’s yearold marijuana laws still need to be improved, Larsen is now using cannabis’s route to legalization as a map for a new frontier: magic mushrooms, a drug in the same class of psychedelics as LSD and mescaline under the federal Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA).
Larsen, a founding member of the B.C. Marijuana Party and the Canadian Marijuana Party and former editor of Cannabis Culture magazine, played a role in the country’s cannabis legalization efforts, opening the non-profit Medicinal Cannabis Dispensary more than 10 years ago. He believes mass civil disobedience and the normalization of cannabis retailers that started in B.C. were necessary factors preceding legal change.
“The reason that cannabis was legalized, or at least one of the biggest reasons, was that there were already several hundred stores across the country openly selling cannabis in defiance of the law and the legal system was unable to stop this from happening,” Larsen says.
As was the case with cannabis, Larsen believes the path to legalizing magic mushrooms will start with a medical argument leading to a legal battle.
“It took over 20 years between when the first patient in Canada was allowed to access medical cannabis and when the law finally changed,” Larsen says.
“I think we’re looking at least 10 years or more before the law changes (for magic mushrooms).”
In July of this year, Larsen opened The Medicinal Mushroom Dispensary, an online mail-order dispensary for small amounts of hallucinogenic psilocybe mushrooms for therapeutic purposes. He calls magic mushrooms, especially when taken in a small amount known as a microdose, “pretty much the safest thing there is.” His online operation has not yet been targeted legally and he intends to open a psilocybin storefront in Vancouver.
“Even if I was convicted and found guilty — which is a lot of ifs involved and I don’t think that would happen — no judge is going to put me in jail for something like this,” Larsen says.
“The penalties involved are unlikely to stop someone who’s determined like I am.”
In Canada, possessing, selling or transporting psilocybin mushrooms without a prescription or licence is an indictable offence with the possibility of up to three years in prison. Currently there are no approved therapeutic products containing psilocybin in the country.
While the medical potential of magic mushrooms seems to be gaining clout, Canada has no plans to decriminalize the plant and its mind-altering compounds, despite little evidence that people can become physically or psychologically dependent on the drug.
Magic mushrooms have been decriminalized in at least seven countries and at least three more have no laws preventing the sale, distribution or use of psilocybin. In the U.S., Denver and Oakland have decriminalized magic mushrooms.
Larsen calls drug prohibition “the war on plants,” because it targets “most of the world’s most useful, culturally relevant and beneficial plants, from peyote to mushrooms to cannabis to cocoa leaves to opium poppies.”
Larsen’s not a doctor, but Bruce Tobin is and he believes there are valid scientific, legal and moral arguments for Canadians in serious psychological distress involving end-of-life despair, existential anxiety and depression to have
access to try psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy. After practising private psychotherapy for 35 years, teaching clinical skills at the University of Victoria for 25 and working under contract with Health Canada providing psychological services to First Nations communities in the Victoria area for 20 years, he now leads TheraPsil, a team of psychotherapists and medical professionals dedicated to the cause.
A pair of landmark studies out of American universities from December 2016 show psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy to be “safe” and “effective” without any adverse effects. Data reflected immediate, substantial and sustained decreases in depression, death anxiety, cancer-related demoralization and hopelessness while increasing quality of life, life meaning and optimism. The changes persisted six months later.
Tobin calls the results from the first two phases of clinical trials “extremely impressive” and says it’s “heartening” to see research entering the third phase, which would involve much more subjects. But the outlook is not all rosy.
“At our current rate of progress, it could be another 10 years before psilocybin successfully completes through those trials and becomes an orthodox medicine,” Tobin says.
“In the meantime, there are nearly 3,000 new Canadian patients every year who are suffering from end-of-life distress that fit our program’s criteria and they are in dire need of relief now.”
Eligible patients in Therapsil’s proposal must meet four criteria: Have a terminal illness; suffer from serious end-of-life distress; distress interferes with treatments and have tried “everything else” to no avail.
Therapists currently risk criminal penalties if they recommend or encourage the use of psilocybin, which Tobin believes puts clinicians, who have a duty to maximize benefits and minimize potential harm, in a moral and professional dilemma.
“Current science is telling us that psilocybin is the treatment most
likely to benefit these patients and our ethical code requires us to always act in our clients’ (best interest) and federal law forbids us to use the treatment that’s most beneficial,” Tobin says.
“I’ve always wanted to stay on the right side of the law, but what’s troubled me is that I didn’t want to ignore the suffering of my patients and my ethical duty toward them. So since I didn’t want to break the law, my goal has now become to try and change the law.”
Tobin was recently part of an application to Health Canada seeking a Section 56 exemption to the CDSA. The exemption allows researchers, including physicians, veterinarians and others affiliated with universities and private industry, to use a controlled substance.
Tobin said if Health Canada denies the application, his team is prepared to challenge the decision in court using the same kind of Charter arguments used for medical cannabis. They’ll argue that the health department’s refusal would violate Canadians’ right to “life, liberty and security of person.”
John Conroy, a Vancouver-based veteran attorney specializing in cannabis cases, doesn’t see a legal distinction between the medical argument for cannabis and Tobin’s push for psilocybe mushrooms.
“The legislation is there to enable it to happen,” Conroy says.
“The question is more of a practical one of how would they do it, how would they make sure that it meets a certain standard and so on.”
Conroy looks at the potential blueprint for magic mushroom legalization and sees opportunities to avoid what he sees as the pitfalls of cannabis legalization, primarily the remaining stiff legal punishments. He says the main problem with cannabis is that it would be a natural health product if the federal government didn’t “expressly” take it out of the schedule and create its own legislation.
He suggests the smartest and easiest transition would be to add psilocybe mushrooms to Canada’s natural health products, which includes herbal remedies and traditional medicines. Conroy believes it would be a less complicated course than the one the federal government took with cannabis.
“Or will they create The Psilocybin Act? And psilocybin regulations? With licensed producers?” He asks, laughing at the absurdity of history repeating itself.
There’s nowhere near the same amount of demand for mushrooms as there was for weed, Conroy says, but the ground-floor efforts of people like Larsen and Tobin will make it an interesting path to watch.
“We’ve always had to have these folks that have been willing to put their bodies on the line in order to move things forward,” Conroy says.