Backed by strong corporate and media support, the psychedelic drug industry is set to move forward regardless of the outcome of today’s election
The precise result of today’s U.S. election is anybody’s guess. With a highly polarized electorate and increasing unreliability of poll results, pre-election forecasting is dubious at best.
What is certain is that whichever party takes the reins in the United States, psychedelic drug reform will be on the political agenda. A November 1st headline from the NY Post is revealing.
With all of the political, social and economic issues facing the U.S., and with a different medical issue (the COVID-19 second wave) hogging most media attention, psychedelic drug reform is headline news on election day in the United States.
As Psychedelic Stock Watch regularly observes, the psychedelic drug industry should be attracting enormous media and political interest.
Today’s
Mental Health Crisis is a larger pandemic than COVID-19. Over 1 billion people suffer from stress-related disorders like depression, addiction, anxiety and PTSD.
Current treatment options for most of these mental health issues is dismal. Psychedelic drug R&D shows the clear potential to revolutionize these multi-billion-dollar treatment markets.
However, the mainstream media has been notoriously slow in embracing new trends in the pharmaceutical industry – especially where there is a connection to ‘War on Drugs’ era anti-drug propaganda. The legal cannabis industry is the obvious example.
Yet with the psychedelic drug industry, we see the mainstream media in the role of enthusiastic publicist rather than a drug-reform obstructionist.
Tuesday’s election isn’t all about Trump vs. Biden.
Voters in 32 states and the District of Columbia will also have their say on 120 local ballot measures — including legalizing the use of “magic mushrooms” as a therapeutic drug and giving consent to recreational use of marijuana.
Oregon, where weed is already sold legally, is considering whether to allow the regulated medical use of psilocybin, a hallucinogen more commonly known as magic mushrooms.
The legal cannabis industry has a multi-year headstart on the psychedelic drug industry. Thus “cannabis legalization” ballot measures greatly outnumber psychedelics-based ballots (this election).
Yet not only is the mainstream media providing the psychedelic drug industry with (at least) equal coverage versus cannabis, mainstream reporting on psychedelic drug development is almost universally positive.
Given the severity of the Mental Health Crisis and the urgent need for better treatment options, mainstream support for psychedelic drug-based
medicine is understandable. But we are even regularly seeing editorials sympathetic to the
recreational use of these substances.
With the legal cannabis industry, public opinion has been light years ahead of Big Media and Big Business in embracing cannabis reform and commercialization.
With psychedelic drugs, many big-name investors from Silicon Valley and Wall Street are leading the charge to build this industry and fund this drug development. People like
Peter Thiel (PayPal),
Bob Parsons (GoDaddy),
Steve Jurvetson (Tesla), and
Mike Novogratz (Goldman Sachs).
And the mainstream media is trumpeting the potential of psychedelic drugs for both medicinal use and biohacking. Compared to cannabis, it’s surreal.
A Crisis. An election. A (drug) Revolution.
Whatever the outcome, today’s U.S. election is another stepping stone toward the legalization and commercialization of psychedelic drugs.
