"Why Now? Medicine, Media, and Mysticism in Past and Present American Thought on Psychedelic Drugs"

With the Spring semester coming to a close, this space will no longer be needed to highlight all the research topics and presentation plans of students in my Marijuana Law, Policy & Reform seminar.  And so, I can now return to, and catch up on, posting a lot of recently produced papers that are part of the on-going series of student papers supported by the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center.  To that end, the title of this post is the title of this paper authored by Aaron Roberts, a third-year student at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.

The public perception of psychedelic substances has become considerably more favorable in recent years.  This shift can be seen in decriminalization measures passed in several U.S. cities as well as Oregon’s commitment to establish a state-licensed psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy program.  These dramatic developments beg the question: Why now? Three particular aspects of psychedelic drugs have shaped the public response to them in the modern era: the established medical potential of psychedelics, the shift in media treatment of these substances, and their “entheogenic,” or spirituality-inducing, properties.  This paper examines these three factors historically.  Additionally, this paper relates ayahuasca specifically to each of the three areas. Ayahuasca is a useful case study due to its intense psychoactive effects, its onetime popularization, and its longer history of ritualistic, shamanic use.