Australia legalizes powerful mind-altering drugs for prescription purposes

An MDMA tablet during a seizure in Colombia (illustration image).

AP - Fernando Vergara

Text by: RFI Follow

1 min

Australia has just announced that it will authorize the prescription, for medical purposes only and under very strict conditions, of MDMA and psilocybin, in other words “hallucinogenic mushrooms”.

Powerful psychotropics, which psychiatrists will be able to prescribe from July to treat their patients suffering from post-traumatic stress and acute depression. 

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With our correspondent in Brisbane,

When we talk about MDMA or “hallucinogenic mushrooms”, we think more of giant raves or the hippie movement of the 70s than of drugs. 

And yet, from July 2023, these substances can be prescribed by psychiatrists to their patients.

The first, to treat those suffering from post-traumatic stress, in particular soldiers returning from the front.

And the second, cases of acute depression. 

A world first!

To justify its decision, a world first, the Australian Medicines Agency expressed the current lack of a solution for patients suffering from certain forms of mental illness for whom conventional treatments have no effect.

While insisting on the fact that the administration of these psychedelic substances will be strictly supervised by health professionals. 

Like cannabis, authorized since 2016 in Australia for strictly medicinal purposes, any other form of use of MDMA and “hallucinogenic mushrooms” will remain prohibited. 

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• Australia

• Dope

• Health and medicine