From Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “Over the six months that Andrew was undergoing therapy, Australia’s peak medical regulator was evaluating an application to reclassify psilocybin and MDMA (the compound in ‘Ecstasy’) as medicines. It had knocked back a similar proposal just the year before. So when it decided in February to become the first country in the world to approve such a change, it shocked even those who had proposed it.
. . . As recently as October last year, the TGA ruled that there was insufficient evidence to down-schedule the drugs. But just months later, in February, it did a spectacular 180-degree turn and approved psychiatrists to use MDMA for PTSD and psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression.
That move divided the psychiatric community. It went against the advice from the peak bodies for doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists, respectively. And Background Briefing can reveal it went against the advice of the TGA’s own advisory committee. ‘I have serious concerns about how that decision was reached,’ a person involved in the deliberations told Background Briefing. So, what caused the typically conservative TGA to change its mind, in a matter of months?”
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