Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out

Every era gets the buzz its zeitgeist requires. Now that the signature drug of the 1960s is all but totally legal, and the path from illicit to accepted for drugs is well-defined, and the profit potential has been shown to be huge, the battle over psychedelic intellectual property has begun. The quest for psilocybin patents is characterized as a search for “medicines in this rapidly growing sector” but the fact that the market for LSD and other hallucinogens is “mushrooming” just as an increasing number of people have decided that they’ve had enough of the rat-race is too serendipitous to be coincidental. Compass Pathways’ has acquired its fourth U.S. patent, this one for a form of psilocybin the company isn’t using in its clinical trials on treatment-resistant depression. The patent works to “expand their intellectual property kingdom,” said Mason Marks, senior fellow and project lead on the Project on Psychedelics Law and Regulation at Harvard Law School: The FDA has granted breakthrough therapy designation to psilocybin and MDMA (aka molly or ecstasy), for treatment of depression and PTSD. The market is predicted to be valued at $7 billion by 2027, and that doesn’t even count the people who will think tripping is more fun than a dead-end job.