Year: 2024

Possible paths for drug reform?

Harvard Law Today //  Petrie-Flom Center At a Petrie-Flom book talk, panelists discuss the lost history of constitutional challenges to punitive drug laws and possible ways forward…

Psychedelics, Psychosocial Support, and Psychotherapy: Why It Matters for the Law, Ethics, and Business of Medical Psychedelic Use

I. Glenn Cohen, Fordham Law Review This Essay, Part of a Symposium on Drug Law for the 21st Century, proceeds as follow. Part I briefly describes how vociferous this debate has become among advocates for the medical use of psychedelics. Part II discusses why this choice matters, legally and ethically. This includes a discussion of…

Introducing Petrie-Flom’s POPLAR and PULSE Affiliated Researchers on Psychedelics

Bill of Health //  Petrie-Flom Center The Petrie-Flom Center is excited to announce our affiliated researchers for the Project on Psychedelics Law and Regulation (POPLAR) and our new project, Psychedelic Use, Law, and Spiritual Experience (PULSE). Through research, writing, workshops, and other projects, POPLAR and PULSE affiliated researchers will provide expertise and a range of perspectives on psychedelics law and policy. We look forward to learning from them and sharing their…

Intersections with Indigeneity in Psychedelic Buddhism

Colin Simonds, CSWR Psychedelic Intersections: 2024 Conference Anthology This paper critically analyzes two approaches to Psychedelic Buddhism by Buddhist teachers Mike Crowley and Spring Washam and explores how these teachers think through, talk about, and engage with the Indigenous communities from which their practices originate….

Psychedelic therapies: healing for the wrong reasons?

Eduardo Schenberg, Christine Hauskeller, Claudia Gertraud Schwarz, and Franklin King IV, Nature Mental Health When critically examining the assertion that biomedical treatments work for the ‘right’ reasons compared with alternative approaches, philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers1 coined the phrase ‘healing for the wrong reasons’. Here, we discuss the cognitive dissonances and regulatory misalignments apparent in the…

State Drug Laws

Mason Marks, Fordham Law Review This Essay provides a typology of state drug laws comprising thirteen categories, including decriminalization, recriminalization, adult use, supported adult use, medical use, supported medical use, religious use, social consumption, safe consumption, clinical research, policy analysis, trigger laws, and food and agricultural laws. Several states have enacted hybrid legislation that blends…

Xochipilli: Psychedelic Plants, Song, and Ritual in Aztec Religion

Osiris González Romero, CSWR Theosis Xochipilli, a deity linked to songs, flowers, the rising sun, joy, games, and fertility, holds profound significance in Aztec religion. Historical sources characterize this deity as revered by nobles, elite principals, and guilds of artists, revered in both masculine and feminine forms. Yet Xochipilli is an understudied deity. This essay offers…