Mason Marks

For a while, MDMA looked poised to make history. After decades of advocacy from impassioned supporters, the party drug best known as ecstasy emerged as…

Mushroom edibles are soaring in popularity across the U.S., claiming to offer a variety of mind-altering experiences, from the mild — a boost in focus…

At least 12 people in eight states have fallen ill after eating Diamond Shruumz-brand Microdosing Chocolate Bars and other mushroom edibles, including several who had…

There’s a telling paradox emerging in the world of treatment with psychedelics, according to Christine Hauskeller. In the past, doctors would be concerned if patients…

Research continues to progress on the potential mental and physical health benefits of psychedelics used in a therapeutic context. Yet psychedelic substances remain illegal around…

MAPS Public Benefit Corp. filed an application on Tuesday with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve the psychedelic drug MDMA — also known…

On a crisp autumn morning, a pair of hikers bounded through a tangle of oak trees before dropping their backpacks near the banks of a…

From the breathless media coverage, it would appear that Oregon is on the brink of becoming a haven for shroom-fueled mental wellness. Oregon’s Measure 109,…

Ayahuasca is a psychedelic tea whose roots go back hundreds of years to ceremonial use by Indigenous groups in the Amazon region. …But it’s unclear…

Ayahuasca is a psychedelic tea whose roots go back hundreds of years to ceremonial use by Indigenous groups in the Amazon region. It’s widely used…

The decor of the Nushama Psychedelic Wellness Clinic was designed to look like bliss. "It doesn't feel like a hospital or a clinic, but more like a journey," said Jay Godfrey, the former fashion designer who co-founded the space with Richard Meloff, a lawyer turned cannabis entrepreneur. The "journey", in this instance, is brought on by ketamine, administered intravenously, as a treatment for mental health disorders, albeit one that has not yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). ... "There's nothing suspicious" about off-label prescription use in general, said Mason Marks, a senior fellow at Harvard Law School specialising in the regulations around psychedelics, but ketamine providers need to be careful about over-promising the drug's benefits, particularly when there's limited evidence of its efficacy.

As the psychedelics industry continues to pursue a pharmaceutical business model, the conversation surrounding intellectual property is gaining traction. The business of psychedelic drugs has gained a serious air of legitimacy by modeling itself after the pharmaceutical market. But with this benchmark comes the question of how the industry will marry its goodwill intentions with the hard-nosed business of intellectual property (IP). ... Mason Marks, a senior fellow and project lead with the Project on Psychedelics Law and Regulation at Harvard Law School, said in order to patent a psychedelic substance there needs to be genetic manipulation so that there is a new aspect to the actual substance. “Whether or not you modify the mushroom, you could also patent various methods of growing it and utilizing it, because in those instances, you aren’t patenting the product of nature itself, but a method of producing or using it,” he explained.

The décor of the Nushama Psychedelic Wellness Clinic was designed to look like bliss. “It doesn’t feel like a hospital or a clinic, but more like a journey,” said Jay Godfrey, the former fashion designer who co-founded the space with Richard Meloff, a lawyer turned cannabis entrepreneur. The “journey,” in this instance, is brought on by ketamine, administered intravenously, as a treatment for mental health disorders, albeit one that has not yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. ... “There’s nothing suspicious” about off-label prescription use in general, said Mason Marks, a senior fellow at Harvard Law School specializing in the regulations around psychedelics, but ketamine providers need to be careful about over-promising the drug’s benefits, particularly when there’s limited evidence of its efficacy. According to Dr. Dan Iosifescu, a psychiatrist at N.Y.U. Langone, ketamine is also potentially addictive, heightening the risk of using the drug, even in a therapeutic setting.

Oregon would only allow the use of one mushroom species in its new psilocybin system and would ban chemically synthesized psilocybin. These are just two details in a release of new draft rules expected Tuesday from the Oregon Health Authority. The rules, crafted by an advisory board of doctors and other public health experts, will be used to create Oregon’s ground-breaking system for allowing the use of psilocybin, the hallucinogenic substance produced by many mushrooms. ... “It is kind of a landmark moment because Oregon is the very first state to have created such a system of regulation,” said Mason Marks, a member of Oregon’s psilocybin advisory board and a senior fellow on the Project on Psychedelics Law and Regulation at Harvard Law School. “These are the very first draft rules that we’re seeing, so it really is a kind of pivotal event.”

Psychedelic mushrooms were touted as a panacea for Oregon’s mental health crisis in 2020, when voters passed a first-in-the-nation measure legalizing the supervised use of psilocybin in state-regulated settings. Backed by Portland-area therapists Tom and Sheri Eckert, the language of Measure 109 promised to improve the physical, mental and social well-being of Oregonians by teaching people about “the safety and efficacy of psilocybin in treating mental health conditions.” ... Psilocybin will mostly be administered instead by facilitators who commit to a 120-hour state-certified training program and apply for a state license. They’ll be trained in the “physical, psychological, and spiritual effects of psilocybin, along with education on ethics, equity, history, and culture,” writes Mason Marks, a law professor in Portland who leads the Project on Psychedelics Law and Regulation at Harvard Law School, and who also sits on the Oregon Psilocybin Advisory Board.