Commentary: Evidence-Informed Recommendation to Achieve Approximate Parity in the Allowed Number of Doses for Common Psychedelics.

Policymakers are increasingly using clinical trial data to justify deprioritizing, decriminalizing, or legalizing psychedelic substances, but personal possession limits written into law often lack scientific grounding. This commentary argues that allowable amounts should be based on moderate-high doses shown safe and effective in clinical trials, common naturalistic use, and dose-equivalence studies. The authors provide a table of evidence-informed moderate-high doses for seven psychedelics to guide consistent and equitable policy limits, aiming to replace arbitrary thresholds with scientifically justified ones.

Study at a glance

Abstract

In recent years, policymakers have proposed and implemented regulatory changes promoting the deprioritization, decriminalization, or state-level legalization of one or more psychedelic substances, usually referencing data from clinical trials as reasons to support liberalizing drug control policies. As psychedelic policies continue to be drafted, personal possession limits may be considered for inclusion in those regulations. If "allowable amount" limits are to be written into law to set personal possession limits, then such amounts should be more consistently related to psychedelic doses found to be safe and efficacious in clinical trials, existing data on moderate-high doses commonly used in various naturalistic settings, and the few studies that estimate psychedelic dose equivalence based on the intensity of subjective effects. In this commentary, we provide an evidence-informed table of typical moderate-high doses for seven commonly used psychedelic substances. These estimates of comparable moderate-high doses can be used to inform "allowable amount" values for psychedelic substances. When such limits are written into legislation, the adoption of evidence-informed comparable limits akin to those presented here would be an important first step toward ensuring greater parity and consistency in drug policy, relative to limits that have little or no scientific basis.