@Digital Buddha 975509 wrote:
Too bad it isn’t easy to set up trials, if everything goes just right we MIGHT have MDMA assisted psychotherapy as an FDA approved prescription medicine by 2021 in the USA.
So so many medical issues are somewhat solvable with stuff we already have but is either scheduled or an analogue for something that is scheduled, and it would be more prudent to try to use them than spending billions to come up with new and increasingly chemically esoteric substances, pragmatic but not popular.
this applies worldwide; although the real barriers nowadays are a lack of acceptance of any recreational use leading to excessive paranoia over the risks and costs of diversion.
This is still complicated by the not insignificant fact that political and business leaders of many newly developed countries who were once colonies of Europe have seen tolerated recreational drug use used in their living memory as a distraction tactic to keep hold of these colonies post WW II.
There might not be anyone alive now from the time of the Opium wars, but in mid 20 century British Malaya (now Malaysia and Singapore) and Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia) heavy cannabis and opiate use were tolerated pre-independence as a “bread and circuses” tactic; the harsh laws these countries are globally notorious for were introduced by newly independent governments fearing recolonisation.
Of course that is extremely unlikely today; if anything these countries may be more stable than some EU nations but domestic overuse of “party drugs” does still pose a problem worldwide and is likely to be more problematic if the drugs are readily available through the public health service or via other sources (such as NPS trade) without any form of extra control.
Beijing is unlikely to have suddenly decided to very recently make a slew of NPS controlled substances in China without a combination of both external pressure and internal problems caused particularly by middle class younger people leading a drug fuelled hedonistic lifestyle; on a similar (or perhaps greater) scale to those which affected the UK and Europe in the early to late 1990s.
