The Cure That Cuts Too Deep

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The thought of entering a doctor’s office and being prescribed MDMA may have seemed insane 20 years ago. Now, it is a very real possibility for Australians suffering from persistent mental health conditions, as long as they’re prepared to hand out between $20-30000. Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Association has become the first in the world to legalise the medicinal use of psychedelic drugs such as Psilocybin, the compound found in magic mushrooms, and MDMA. This raises many questions surrounding the legal paradox of a substance remaining illegal recreationally, but lawful in medical contexts. Whereas this may be framed as a progressive movement toward modern medicine and drug policy, it is important to consider whether the law really reforms when it excludes the majority of the population.

Psychedelic therapy’s main goal is to assist patients with treatment-resistant mental illness, addressing the increasing mental health crisis and lack of solutions available. However, the treatment’s exorbitant prices raise an ever-growing consideration - how legalisation does not equal accessibility. Australia’s ‘Authorised Prescriber’ system means patients must navigate multiple levels of private approvals and referrals, both complex and expensive, before even attaining a prescription. When people require advanced medical literacy, a plethora of existing networks and copious amounts of disposable income to access ‘medicine’, the law is essentially perpetuating a two-tier system, where innovative treatments are reserved for the wealthy.

Drug policy has historically featured unequal enforcement. Lower socio-economic groups are faced with harsh sentencing, whilst wealthier individuals receive rehabilitation. Society glamourises elite cocaine users whilst cannabis smokers are ‘degenerates’. Why is it that individuals accessing private treatment are using drugs ‘legitimately’, whilst the same actions by people who cannot afford $10,000 sessions are illicit? Socially selective law reform is further producing structural and social stigma and maintaining social hierarchies. The law reframing behaviour depending on the class of the individual is a major concern for the effectiveness of the justice system as a whole.

These law reforms ultimately create a broader societal question: should the law be able to filter who uses drugs? Whilst there are many arguments for the medicinal use of drugs, is it fair to exclude one group of society from doing so? The impact of the current reforms isn’t widespread access to medicine or a push for relaxed drug policies. Instead, it entrenches social classes and regresses progression to drug policies by allowing investors and corporations to profit from extreme exclusivity.

Safety concerns may justify the need for regulation; however, law reform should not be for symbolic progression, but for wider social betterment.