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Comment by gautamcgoel | Hacker News Reader

I really hope this leads to more research on the effect of psychedelics on treatment-resistant depression. People with depression suffer unimaginable anguish every day - we owe it to them to give them the best treatment options possible.

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Oregon also legalized research into psychedelics, but that was a separate measure. I think it will take longer to get off the ground, because a committee needs to be established to figure out how to conduct the research.

This isn't legalization and has no impact on federal laws. It won't help with direct research.

The federal-state dynamic is certainly interesting. The federal government doesn't have the resources to enforce all the laws they have on the books and rely on states to enact similar laws to enforce most of them. I wonder if they will ever increase enforcement or if this state-level defiance/contradictions will continue to grow and spread to other states. I think there has been some talk of similar movements for gun rights.

Right, psychedelics are really promising as a treatment.

Which I think makes it criminal that psychedelics are criminal.

There is significant research happening in this space, though most clinical trials seem to be happening outside the US. Canada is taking major steps towards psychedelics as treatment for depression/MDD, palliative/end-of-life care, PTSD, anxiety, etc.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00187-9 is one of the many, many recent articles on the topic.

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