Psychologist and professor Monnica Williams, on the left with a patient, is advocating for psychedelics in therapy to heal racial trauma. Right: Psilocybin mushrooms sit on a drying rack in the Uptown Fungus lab in Springfield, Ore.
(Left: Monnica Williams | Right: AP/Craig Mitchelldyer)
Clinical psychologist and professor Monnica Williams is on a mission to bring psychedelics to therapists’ offices to help people heal from their racial traumas. To do this, she’s jumping over some big hurdles.
In 2014, US Coast Guard vessels seized four tons of cocaine and other drugs in what was then considered a “big” bust. Seizures have continued to climb, only to be outstripped by production.
Connie Terrell/US Coast Guard
Khalid Tinasti, Graduate Institute – Institut de hautes études internationales et du développement (IHEID) and Yong-an Zhang, Shanghai University
Drug seizures are on the rise, but so too are production, consumption, trafficking and violence. The current drug control regime is showing its limits, yet the changes needed require consensus.
Mexican soldiers stand guard near during the arrest of Joaquin Ovidio Guzman in Culiacan, Mexico, in January 2023.
Juan Carlos Cruz/AFP via Getty Images
A 1971 law, and the parallel growth of an illegal economy, shaped South Africa’s unique cannabis landscape.
B.C. Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Sheila Malcolmson holds a copy of exemption documents that enable British Columbia to decriminalize possession of small amounts of ‘hard’ drugs for personal use. B.C.’s bold experiment will be closely watched as a comparator with other progressive jurisdictions.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
British Columbia’s bold experiment provides an opportunity to implement more balance in Canadian drug policy, and a more principled withdrawal from the war on drugs.
Minneapolis police force entry moments before shooting Amir Locke.
Minneapolis Police Department via AP
Formerly incarcerated Americans face food insecurity rates double that of the general population. A 1996 law that prohibits drug felons from getting crucial benefits may be partially to blame.
Death in Rio: security forces patrol the Jacarezinho favela the day after 25 people were killed in a drugs operation on May 6 2021.
EPA-EFE/Andre Coelho
Attempts to wage war on drugs in developing countries which don’t take into account the needs of local people are doomed to fail. Here’s why.
Activists wave flags in front of the U.S. Capitol to demand that Congress pass cannabis reform legislation on Oct. 8, 2019.
Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images
A cannabis decriminalization bill approved by the House is a sign from Congress that sentiment around the drug is evolving, but it misses a chance to regulate marijuana for the good of all Americans.
According to Oregon law, possessing a small amount of drugs for personal consumption is now a civil – rather than criminal – offense.
Peter Dazeley via Getty
Possessing heroin, cocaine, meth and other drugs for personal use is no longer a criminal offense in Oregon. The idea is to get people with problem drug use help, not punishment.
A T-shirt worn by a cannabis advocate during a court hearing on the legality of the plant in South Africa.
RODGER BOSCH/AFP via Getty Images
Policy makers need to protect and promote the interests of people whose indigenous knowledge and toil developed a thriving national cannabis economy - in the face of harsh police crackdowns.
In this July 2020 photo, a woman is comforted in her home during a wake for her son who was killed along with at least 26 others in an attack by drug cartels on a drug rehabilitation centre where he was being treated in Irapuato, Mexico.
(AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)
The American public should understand that the United States has played a critical role in creating and fuelling violence in Latin America via its unsuccessful war on drugs.
Demonstrators protest demanding the resignation of the country’s interim president Jeanine Añez in El Alto, Bolivia, August 14 2020.
EPA-EFE/STR
Production of coca leaf, the raw material in cocaine, is surging in Peru despite 40 years of forced eradication designed to convince farmers to abandon it. Bolivia shows a better way forward.
Colombia is the world’s second-biggest cut flower exporter.
AP Photo/Fernando Vergara
A program intended to reduce coca production ended up giving two Latin American countries a big boost to their flower power.
A back alley in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, a high-risk COVID-19 area due to the fact the vulnerable populations converge there, is pictured in January 2020.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward
Drug users are already among the most marginalized and stigmatized populations in times without a pandemic. Unless we decriminalize drug use, once again they will bear the brunt of another deadly disease.