Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The criminalization of substances such as LSD—lysergic acid diethylamide—peyote, psilocybin and the like in the last half century or so brought to an end a very fruitful period of research into the clinical and therapeutic benefits of these substances in both medical and psychiatric contexts.

I would contend, based on my research in light of this, that psychedelics and their criminalization flowed directly out of the countercultural movement experienced in the 1960s and 1970s across Canada and the United States, something that did not take into account the potential therapeutic benefits that were borne out by the data that informed my research and that built my thesis.

In light of this, I would suggest that these things need to be seen in context. Morphine in a medical context is an effective pain management tool, but heroin, the synthetic form of that same substance, has caused untold suffering and countless deaths.

Unlike opioids, psychedelics, as the data will show, do not have any addictive properties but do seem to have therapeutic benefit, and therefore I would suggest that it would be in the interest of the government to consider legislation that would loosen regulations around these substances in order to foster and enhance research into them and into their implementation as clinical components in our health care system.

In my research into LSD, I saw that the encountering of the divine suggested to Abram Hoffer and Humphry Osmond, among others, that these substances contain an ability for our health care model to bridge the gap between this realm and the next. In this life, this holistic model that people like Hoffer and Osmond discovered and researched in the 1950s and 1960s and those that have been further enhanced in the psychedelic renaissance over the last 30 years or so would suggest that there are inherent medical and clinical benefits, and the government would be well advised to invest time and legislative energy into this as opposed to the movement towards legalization and ready access to substances such as marijuana for recreational use.

In addition, psychedelic plants such as peyote in the Native American Church context, as well as ayahuasca in the context of the South American shamans, have been used by indigenous peoples around the world in the integration of their holistic model of health and healing, something that is not accounted for within the western medical paradigm. Therefore, I would suggest that the integration of these substances and therapies offers a wonderful opportunity for the federal government and Health Canada to begin to bridge that gap, as these substances dovetail so well with that more holistic integration and ways of knowing of our indigenous peoples.

Something that has been borne out in the research is that natural substances such as psilocybin have been shown in the last 30 years to show remarkable capacity to both ameliorate and have patients come to terms with anxieties around end of life, something that cannot necessarily be completely conceptualized within the concept of our western medical paradigm, which does not necessarily account for the spiritual as well as the physical.

As a final disclosure, I speak today not as a member of the Anglican Church of Canada or as a priest serving in the Diocese of Saskatchewan but rather as an individual speaking to my own academic research for my thesis, which was published in 2018.

Thank you.

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