Dr. Bronner’s Donates $150K To Magic Mushroom Legalization Efforts In Oregon
Dr. Bronner’s, the organic soap company famous for its charitable efforts, has recently announced a massive donation to an organization in Oregon that is working to legalize psychedelic mushroom-assisted therapy.
CEO David Bronner made the announcement at an event in Portland last week, which was held at the Newmark Theatre and featured the mycologist and psilocybin advocate Paul Stamets.
Bronner announced that his company will be donating $150,000 to The Oregon Psilocybin Service Initiative, a group that is working on a ballot initiative for the legalization of mushroom-assisted therapy. If the ballot initiative is successful, Oregon residents will have the ability to vote on the measure in the November 2020 election.
“The Bronner family is no stranger to severe depression and anxiety. We firmly believe that the integration of psilocybin therapy, to which the FDA recently granted a special ‘breakthrough designation’ is crucial to heal epidemic rates of depression, anxiety, and addiction that pharmaceutical drugs are completely inadequate for,” Bronner said in a later written statement.
In order to get the measure on the ballot, 112,020 signatures will need to be gathered by July 2, 2020.
Years ago, such a ballot measure would have been inconcievable. Even after the widespread legalization of medical and recreational marijuana, it still seemed that psychedelic drugs were a far way off from mainstream acceptance. However, a lot has happened in just a few short years.
Denver was the first municipality in the United States to decriminalize possession of psychedelic mushrooms, and the organizers of that successful initiative are working to implement the same strategy in other cities and states. Significant progress has also been made in opening up psychedelic compounds to scientific study.
As Truth Theory reported earlier this month, a $17 million psychedelic research center will soon be opening at John’s Hopkins University. This research center is the first of its kind in the United States, and the largest of its kind in the entire world.
Researchers at the new Johns Hopkins facility will be studying psychedelic substances and their effect on the human brain. More specifically, they will be seeking possible treatments for mental health issues like addiction, depression, PTSD, Alzheimer’s disease, eating disorders and a variety of other conditions.
The science in this field has been so convincing, that large investors are now working to develop pharmaceutical drugs derived from these compounds.
It was announced last year that a startup called Compass Pathways had received approval from The Food and Drug Administration to develop treatments for depression with psilocybin.
Compass Pathways launched in the UK in 2016 thanks to funding from PayPal founder Peter Thiel. While the company is just now receiving approval to run trials in the US, they were already approved in Canada, the Netherlands and at their base of operations in the UK.
Image Credit: DR. BRONNER’S
Written by: John Vibes
John Vibes is an author and journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture, and focuses solutions-oriented approaches to social problems. He is also a host of The Free Your Mind Conference and The Free Thought Project Podcast. Read More stories by John Vibes
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