Australian government backs psychedelic treatment trials
The Australian government has launched a $15 million competitive grant round to kick-start Australian clinical trials of potential breakthrough therapies. The so-called 'Mental Illness Grant Opportunity' represents a distinct departure from the government’s American-style prohibitionist approach to drug use. The announcement comes despite Australia's failure to reschedule MDMA and psilocybin from a prohibited substance to a controlled medicine.
So why is the Australian government backing psychedelic treatment trials despite refusing to reclassify the drugs for use in clinical settings?
Dr Nicole Lee, professor at Curtin University’s National Drug Research Institute, said that "while international trials have looked into the safety and impacts of these kinds of drugs on users, we still need to conduct research into whether psychedelic drugs are more effective than existing treatments, work that Australia could pioneer with this funding for large-scale clinical trials."
“Australia used to be leaders in the world when it came to drug and alcohol policy, but in the last 10 to 15 years we’ve slipped back to a zero-tolerance, prohibition approach and we are way behind the rest of the world, who are decriminalising and revolutionising these types of drugs,” Lee told the Guardian.
The grant represents an opportunity for Australia to develop novel treatments that will both be more effective and insure that patients don't become over-reliant on prescription medications.
Dr Arthur Christopoulos, dean of Monash University’s faculty of pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences, said the government had realised the “achilles heel to treating the mental health tsunami is the lack of truly new and effective medicines to treat mental illness”.
“Every single psychiatric drug on the market is based on research that is at least 50 years old,” said Christopoulos, who specialises in drug discovery and neuropharmacology.
“We have had enormous advances in the destigmatisation of mental illness, in support systems, in mental health advocacy, but there have been effectively zero new additional therapies.”
Read the full article, 'Australian government backs psychedelic drug clinical trials to treat mental illness' in the Guardian here.
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