The first national poll of UK attitudes towards the medicalisation of psilocybin and support for policy changes has revealed that the British public support reform of psilocybin policy and a decision to reschedule it.
In a new YouGov poll, commissioned by Drug Science, researchers found that a majority in every individual demographic, political, or regional population are in favour of a reforming policy surrounding the psychoactive substance psilocybin.
According to the data, 55% would support a future change while only 13% are adamantly against the proposition and 31% unsure.
As Drug Science reports, very few people in the UK at the moment can currently access to psilocybin-assisted therapy – while these clinical trials are “limited-scale and oversubscribed.”
Also, 55% support moves to make psilocybin-assisted therapy available to armed forces veterans suffering from PTSD, depression and anxiety – however, data from clinical trials of psilocybin is not yet available.
Drug Science states: “By removing unnecessary obstacles to open-label, exploratory trials of PTSD in veterans, moving psilocybin to Schedule 2 will simultaneously facilitate the generation of the clinically robust data, and offer a lifeline to a patient group for whom conventional treatments are often ineffective.”
Experts at the organisation called the government for rescheduling psilocybin, stating “by rescheduling psilocybin, the UK can become a world leader in psychedelic research, capturing a significant portion of the global research budget.”
Dr James Rucker, Head of the Psychedelic Trials Group at King’s College London, said: “Schedule 1 restrictions hinder our efforts whilst being unlikely to provide any meaningful reduction in the risk of diversion when compared to Schedule 2 restrictions.
“The UK has an internationally recognised reputation in developing new treatments. We have an opportunity to be world leaders here as well if the government acts to reclassify those treatments that are showing therapeutic promise into Schedule 2.”
If you’d like to read more about the report, you can find a summary by clicking here and the full report by clicking on this link.
