Timmy Davis of the Conservative Drug Policy Reform Group (CDPRG) tells Psychedelic Health about the organisation’s campaign to reschedule psilocybin in a bid to increase psychedelic research.

Currently in the UK psilocybin is categorised as a Schedule 1 drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act 2001 – the highest schedule alongside drugs such as raw opium and LSD. 

This status makes research into the substance incredibly challenging as financial costs for licensing and laboratory retrofitting can be costly. 

Although costly – some are successful in carrying out such research – and now, an increasing amount of studies are showing psychedelic compounds such as psilocybin, LSD, DMT and others as promising treatments for mental health conditions.

A recent debate in UK Parliament saw MP for Warrington North, Charlotte Nichols, lead calls for the rescheduling of psilocybin after describing her own experience living with PTSD as a “living hell”.

The debate was the result of three years of campaigning from CDPRG and Psychedelic Access Rights (PAR Global), which has taken the form of parliamentary meetings and the launch of a petition that reached over 10,000. the campaign also saw the launch of The UK’s first-ever psychedelics advert that featured on a digital billboard in London.

Ahead of the debate, CDPRG and leading mental health charities – including Heroic Hearts, SANE, The Campaign Against Living Miserably – and organisations Drug Science and the Royal College of Psychiatrists, called on the ACMD to review psilocybin status as a Schedule 1 drug for research purposes. 

How did we get here?

Speaking to Psychedelic Health, Timmy Davis, Psychedelics Lead at CDPRG and Policy Director at PAR, explains that in 2019, due to a lack of action on psychedelic research, the Reschedule Psilocybin project was launched at Europe’s leading psychedelic conference, Breaking Convention.

Following this, in 2020 Davis, along with Manchester University Professor Jo Neill, Dr James Rucker and others in the CDPRG, collaborated with the Adam Smith Institute to compile the report ‘Medicinal Use of Psilocybin: Reducing restrictions on research and treatment’.  

The report highlights that in 2017 the Home Office commissioned the ACMD to review what could be done to facilitate research involving Schedule 1 controlled drugs. 

It states: “In December 2017, the ACMD proposed the creation of a temporary ‘research schedule’ with reduced regulatory requirements. Their recommendation was that Schedule 1 drugs proceeding into clinical trials could be moved to this novel schedule, provided that the drug sponsor issues a detailed investigator’s brochure and ethical committee approval to the Home Office, showing evidence of safety and tolerability. 

“Under this model, drugs that are not successfully brought to market would revert to Schedule 1 status.”

The authors go on to highlight that, in 2019 “a Home Office Minister of State, Nick Hurd, wrote to the Chair of the ACMD to reject the notion of a novel research schedule on the basis of a “heavy burden on legislative amendment time,” since Ministers would be required to consult with the ACMD every time a drug was moved into or out of the proposed schedule.”

Davis continues: “The Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001, based upon the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act stipulates the Schedules of controlled drugs and so who can prescribe them and how easy they are to research. At the time of the 1971 Act, psilocybin hadn’t had any application made to the MHRA requesting it be considered a medicine, so fell automatically within Class A and Schedule 1.”

Davis highlights that this decision was counter to the evidence which “hadn’t even been collected and considered”, leading to huge barriers to research for over 50 years. Other drugs such as heroin and cocaine fell under Schedule 2 as they were considered to have medical utility.” 

To add to these barriers, psilocybin and psychedelics across the board have carried a heavy stigma after years of media reports painting the compounds as dangerous – meaning many scientists have shied away from such research. 

“This is very frustrating for UK life sciences and bioscience research,” says Davis. “Also for the development of mental health treatments, and so, essentially, for patients.”

Championing patient access

In October 2022, the British Medical Association warned that the UK is facing a mental health crisis “that is spiralling out of control” and the UK government was failing patients due to a “system that is struggling to keep up with rising demand.”

The UK’s Office of National Statistics stated that between July 2019 and March 2020 prevalence of mental health conditions in the UK population was 10%, rising to 21% by January to March 2021 and dropping to 16% by June 2022.

Against this backdrop, the CDPRGUK is campaigning for patient access to psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy. 

“The government has commissioned the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) to look into barriers to research, and this is really good because it means that if the recommendations are acted upon then research will be facilitated,” says Davis.

“That said, the evidence is there that psilocybin is in the wrong schedule, so hopefully the recommendations will reflect that rather than just changing the restrictions on Schedule 1 substances. 

“For the Home Office to reschedule psilocybin they will first have to review the evidence for its harms and medical utility.

“If the Home Office does review the evidence, regardless of the outcome, it shows that they have a commitment to evidence-based drug policy – but most importantly psilocybin’s current schedule is unjustified and should be modified to reflect the evidence, allowing the patients who are demanding access to have it prescribed to them by their psychiatrists.”

This sentiment is echoed by the UK public, with results from a YouGov survey revealing that 55% of respondents support relaxing restrictions on the medical use of psilocybin for mental health conditions if it didn’t affect how it was classified in criminal law. 

A total of 68% supported access to patients in palliative care when they learned patients in Canada were able to receive access under its Special Access Programme (SAP). 

Additionally, a recent CDPRG report – ‘Making UK Drug Policy A Success: Reforming The Policy Making Process’ – shows that the majority of MPs from all parties want evidence-based reform in the UK.

“We feel confident and are really excited to see how everything plays out – it is hard to find anyone who is against increasing access to those who need it,” Davis concludes.