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The U.S. has perhaps never been more divided than it is today. Americans are divided over politics and myriad social issues, COVID-19, climate change, immigration and seemingly everything else.Not surprisingly, opinions also diverge on whether psychedelic drugs have therapeutic potential. Earlier this year, a survey from The Harris Poll found that 65% of Americans with anxiety, depression or PTSD believe that drugs such as the classic psychedelic psilocybin and the empathogen methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) should be available for therapeutic use. The compounds remain Schedule I drugs but could find FDA approval in the coming years.
Mental health professionals have tended to view psychedelics skeptically after they were illegal in the 1970s. A 2018 survey in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease found that psychiatrists tended to view psychedelics as “potent…