Ironically, the criminalization of the possession of psychedelic drugs in 1970 and the attendant passion of the authorities’ anti-drug crusade did little to slow the spread of recreational abuse, but effectively shut all research into possible beneficial uses down cold. The cost to the American taxpayer of giving these vets the medical care they’ve earned will be in the range of a trillion dollars over the next 30 or 40 years. If PTSD could be reliably cured with a short-term treatment using an inexpensive drug like MDMA, those costs could be slashed dramatically. And yet, though the Department of Defense is spending lavishly on speculative development all sorts of untested therapies – including planting microchips in veterans’ brains – it has yet to budget a dime for MDMA research, in part, clearly, because the cultural wars of 1970 continue to hold the image of psychedelics hostage.
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