Arizona isn't ready yet for legal magic mushrooms and ecstasy, even as 'medicine' (2024)

Opinion: Gov. Katie Hobbs got the order right. First, we do research on whether it's safe. Then we consider legalizing psychedelic drugs as medicine.

I wonder what the Romans were doing when their civilization started crumbling beneath their feet and the age of empire gave way to sloth and decadence.

My guess is they debated the glories of magic mushrooms, groping for that next thing that could divert their minds from the great slide down.

You know, like what the Arizona Legislature tried to do in the final weeks of the session, circa 2024.

Arizona wants that next pill to relieve our pain

Americans, not just Arizonans, are a drug-obsessed people, always self-medicating and searching for that next pill that will smooth out our anxieties and relieve our pain and sadness.

Millions of us struggle with drug and alcohol addiction in our families and circle of friends, according to a 2023 survey by Kaiser Family Foundation.

Writing recently in The Free Press about America’s “late-Soviet” period and how today’s national and cultural decay mimic the decline of the now defunct Soviet Union, economic historian Niall Ferguson pointed to a 2022 paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association–Psychiatry that describes our addiction to addiction.

In the United States, “every symptom of despair has been defined as a disorder or dysregulation within the individual. This incorrectly frames the problem, forcing individuals to grapple on their own,” Peter Sterling and Michael L. Platt wrote.

“It also emphasizes treatment by pharmacology, providing innumerable drugs for anxiety, depression, anger, psychosis, and obesity, plus new drugs to treat addictions to the old drugs.”

Mushrooms and ecstasy may (or may not) help

In Arizona these last several decades, we’ve been busy legalizing drugs in the most backward way. The people — not doctors, not scientists — have been deciding that drugs with hallucinogenic or psychoactive qualities are necessary to relieve our pain and anxiety.

The latest run at cart-before-the-horse medicine comes in the way of two drugs — magic mushrooms and ecstasy. The Arizona Legislature considered both.

“Magic Mushrooms” or psilocybin can “cause people to experience distorted sights and sounds and lose their sense of time and space,” according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

“People who take psilocybin may also feel intense emotions ranging from bliss to terror and may have physical side effects such as increased heart rate or nausea.”

Presently, the National Institute is backing research into psilocybin as a possible clinical treatment for substance-use disorders and other mental illnesses.

The other drug — MDMA, or Molly, or ecstasy — is, according to the National Institute, “a lab-made (synthetic) drug that has effects similar to stimulants like methamphetamine.”

“Though MDMA is commonly taken as an illicit drug, researchers are studying its use in therapeutic settings as a potential treatment for severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).”

Do research, but with the proper guiderails

To her credit, Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed a bill that would have legalized clinical mushroom therapy.

Hobbs does not oppose treatment outside the mainstream for those who suffer depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, she wrote, “But they should not be the subject of experiments for unproven therapies with a lack of appropriate guardrails.”

The state’s psilocybin research advisory board has asserted it “does not yet have the evidence needed to support widespread clinical expansion,” she wrote.

Lawmakers are lying again: About magic mushrooms

Hobbs did, however, sign a bill that would spend $5 million on research on mushroom therapy for PTSD.

That research will be led by science, in this case Dr. Sue Sisley, the nation’s only researcher with U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration approval to work with psilocybin mushrooms, as reported by The Arizona Republic’s Ray Stern.

Hobbs did sign a bill authorizing treatment with MDMA, or ecstasy, for sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder. But none of that happens without U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval first, Stern writes.

The FDA is expected to make a final decision on MDMA in August.

Science should lead the way on new drugs

Earlier this month an FDA panel rejected MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD, The New York Times reports.

That vote does not dictate the FDA’s decision; however, the agency usually follows the advice of its advisory panels, The Times reports.

Years ago, Arizona pretended that marijuana was a medicine before medical science had made that determination. Medical marijuana became the camel’s nose that led to recreational marijuana.

Give Katie Hobbs credit for returning reason and common sense to these types of questions.

She has returned science and medicine to their rightful place.

The horse is pulling the cart again.

Phil Boas is an editorial columnist with The Arizona Republic. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com.