The Organizer’s Handbook is a living, evolving collection of organizing principles, guides, tools, and research. These documents have been created by the Decriminalize Nature National Board and local DN organizations, and act as a starting point for those who seek to organize their own communities, and contribute to and become part of the movement to re-establish our direct relationship to consciousness-healing plants and fungi.
Law & Policy
Why are some Native Americans fighting efforts to decriminalize peyote?
For Navajo spiritual leader Steven Benally, saving a Native American religion from extinction means preserving those diminishing lands where hallucinogenic peyote grows wild.
Right to Try Psilocybin
Right to Try Psilocybin (RTTP) is community group that was created by a wide-array of concerned patients and advocates in the Spring of 2022. After months of stonewalling and inaction by the Drug Enforcement Administration concerning patient access to psilocybin, RTTP organized a massive direct action at the DEA HQ in Arlington, Virginia, which resulted in the arrests of 17 advocates. RTTP believes that the Right to Try Act of 2018 covers all investigational drugs, including those listed in on Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act and supports any new legislation that ensures those with life-threatening conditions access to psilocybin (and any other investigational psychedelic drug which meets the requirements of RTT law).
On Drugs
Matt Zorn and Shane Pennington are lawyers that for the past 3 years have been at the bleeding edge of cannabis and drug policy litigation against the government. During this time, we’ve: 1) litigated cases to end the 50-year NIDA monopoly, obtaining one of four Schedule I marijuana cultivation licenses for our client. 2) uncovered a secret DOJ memo; 3) got a smokable hemp ban struck down as unconstitutional in Texas; and 4) got a federal judge to note that “in an appropriate case, the Drug Enforcement Administration may well be obliged to initiate a reclassification proceeding for marijuana, given the strength of” our arguments.
Porta Sophia: Psychedelic Prior Art Library
A simple search tool for innovators and patent reviewers to find relevant prior art in the field of psychedelics. Our mission is to protect the public domain, stimulate innovation, and support good patents to assure psychedelic therapies can one day be available at scale to the people who need them.
Make Room for ’Shrooms
As the weather is getting warmer in Cambridge, we can observe many signs of spring approaching: the snow has started to melt, the trees are growing new leaves, and mushrooms are surfacing. Mushrooms? Well, at least one kind that we know of.
Psychedelic Drug Use in Healthy Individuals: A Review of Benefits, Costs, and Implications for Drug Policy
The potential of psychedelic drugs in the treatment of mental health problems is increasingly being recognized. However, relatively little thrust has been given to the suggestion that individuals without any mental health problems may benefit from using psychedelic drugs, and that they may have a right to do so. This review considers contemporary research into the use of psychedelic drugs in healthy individuals, including neurobiological and subjective effects. In line with findings suggesting positive effects in the treatment of mental health problems, such research highlights the potential of psychedelic drugs for the enhancement of wellbeing even in healthy individuals. The relatively low risk associated with usage does not appear to align with stringent drug laws that impose heavy penalties for their use. Some policy implications, and suggestions for future research, are considered.
Prohibited or Regulated? LSD Psychotherapy and the United States Food and Drug Administration
Over the 1950s and early 1960s, the use of the hallucinogenic drug lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) to facilitate psychotherapy was a promising field of psychiatric research in the USA. However, during the 1960s, research began to decline, before coming to a complete halt in the mid-1970s. This has commonly been explained through the increase in prohibitive federal regulations during the 1960s that aimed to curb the growing recreational use of the drug. However, closely examining the Food and Drug Administration’s regulation of LSD research in the 1960s will reveal that not only was LSD research never prohibited, but that the administration supported research to a greater degree than has been recognized. Instead, the decline in research reflected more complex changes in the regulation of pharmaceutical research and development.
How Will History Remember the Psychedelic Renaissance? The Psychedelic Diversity Conversation. Part 6
Social movements are remembered in history for the things they do and the actions they take, not for what they inadvertently hope will happen.
Psychedelics and Social Justice. The Psychedelic Diversity Conversation: Part 5
For the movement toward psychedelic consciousness to be as transformative as it can possibly be, it is our obligation as a psychedelic community to be aware of our shortcomings and to challenge them head-on.