A Western New York lawmaker wants to launch a pilot program that would allow 10,000 people to receive psychedelic psilocybin therapy for mental illness and other conditions.
What could go wrong?
Under legislation introduced by Assemblyman Pat Burke (D-West Seneca), the pilot program would focus on military veterans, first responders and their families, and people who suffer from cluster headaches.
The aim would be to find out if psilocybin really can help people with mental issues.
It all sounds well and good. Until you remember that we saw recreational weed legalized following a similar rubric. And we know how that’s worked out in New York State. It’s been a disaster.
Medical marijuana was legalized in New York State in 2014. It was meant to ease the pain for people with terminal illnesses like cancer and to help kids who suffered seizures.
Who could argue? What kind of monster doesn’t want to help people find comfort at the end of their lives? Who doesn’t want to help sick children?
And in a very similar way you can hardly argue when it comes to helping military veterans and first responders who are dealing with PTDS and other mental stresses.
It’s easy to get lured in.
When medical marijuana was approved, we weren’t even talking about legalizing weed for recreational use. And the medical weed program was so strict that then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo insisted that smokable marijuana products not be allowed under the law.
Look where we are now, not even 10 years later.
Recreational weed, sorry, I mean “adult use marijuana,” was legalized in New York in 2021 and the stink of weed quickly became ubiquitous on city streets, including on Staten Island.
You smell it while you’re walking on the street, driving, shopping in a store, sitting in a park or riding on mass transit. The odor is there morning, noon and night.
How quaint Cuomo’s old admonition against smokable weed seems now.
What’s worse, the state’s legal weed market remains basically nonexistent, unable to get out of its own way. Very little of the projected revenue is flowing in.
Cartels have swooped in and filled the vacuum, with illegal weed shops popping up everywhere. One gets shuttered, another opens. The police can’t keep up with it all. Supposedly stiff fines are merely the price of doing business for big-money black marketeers. The genie is out of the bottle for good.
And now some would look to take the first steps toward legalizing psychedelics here, beginning with “therapeutic” psilocybin.
Other states, like Colorado, have already legalized psychedelics or are moving toward it. Oregon opened America’s first licensed psylocibin service center, “Epic Healing Eugene,” in September.
It could happen in New York. Making psychedelics legal in a medicinal setting could be how it starts, like it did with legal weed.
Do you think New York would be any more successful creating, managing and profiting from a legal psychedelics market than we have been with legal weed?
Think about it. It might not be that far down the road.
Burke filed the pilot program legislation last Wednesday, according to the Marijuana Moment publication. Text of the legislation can be found here.
Psychedelic psilocybin ‘therapy’ could lead to New York’s next money-losing legal drug disaster (opinion)
4
0
17.12.2023
A Western New York lawmaker wants to launch a pilot program that would allow 10,000 people to receive psychedelic psilocybin therapy for mental illness and other conditions.
What could go wrong?
Under legislation introduced by Assemblyman Pat Burke (D-West Seneca), the pilot program would focus on military veterans, first responders and their families, and people who suffer from cluster headaches.
The aim would be to find out if psilocybin really can help people with mental issues.
It all sounds well and good. Until you remember that we saw recreational weed legalized following a similar rubric. And we know how that’s worked out in New York State. It’s been a disaster.
Medical marijuana was legalized in New York State in 2014. It was meant to ease the pain for people with terminal illnesses like........
© The Staten Island Advance
visit website
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Andrew Mitrovica
Mort Laitner
Rami G Khouri
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
Nikkei Editorial
