10 Feb THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD SUPPORT PSYCHEDELIC RESEARCH | THE WEEK
An opinion piece in the popular news magazine THE WEEK encourages government funding of scientific research into psychedelics. National correspondent Brian Cooper examines how pharmaceutical companies fund research on new drugs using two examples–psychedelics and antibiotics. In both cases, the industry has financial incentives for avoiding research. The solution, according to Cooper, is to provide an independent source of funding.
“So what is to be done? First, direct government funding is and always has been an important part of scientific funding. In a sane world, with substances as promising as the above psychedelics, the government would simply fund the research itself and be done with it. Only an increasingly anachronistic brand of drug warrior politics stands in the way. But with something like 22 veterans per day committing suicide, any treatment with a potential 60+ percent long-tem cure rate for PTSD ought to be jammed through mass trials at the highest possible speed.”