Psychedelic Capitalism

Psychedelics have long been sanctioned as dangerous substances. Today, psychedelics are enjoying a new found appeal, even being idealized as wonder drugs. As part of the so-called psychedelic renaissance, reports abound about the benefits of these substances for remedying individual mental health issues and bringing about social change.

Offering a critical view of these developments, Psychedelic Capitalism locates this renaissance in the context of corporate capture, medicalization, and the war on drugs. Wealthy entrepreneurs are investing billions in the psychedelics industry. Biotechnology firms are racing to capture intellectual property and monopolize psychedelic supply chains. Venture capitalists are leveraging the prospects of a lucrative mass market. Together, these actors are appropriating Indigenous knowledge and claiming ownership over substances that have been in the public domain for centuries.

Brownlee and Walby ask if corporations and the medical establishment are suited to steward the mainstreaming of psychedelics, raising concerns with how the psychedelic renaissance is entrenching systems of inequality, limiting access and affordability, and increasing the reach of drug war surveillance and criminalization. Interrogating the consequences of psychedelic capitalism, the authors point to what could be gained from a just and equitable psychedelic future rooted in the public interest.

Jamie Brownlee teaches at Carleton University in the areas of Canadian and international political economy, corporate crime, environmental policy, and climate change. He is the author of Ruling Canada: Corporate Cohesion and Democracy and Academia, Inc.: How Corporatization Is Transforming Canadian Universities.
Kevin Walby is a professor of criminal justice at the University of Winnipeg. He is co-author of Police Funding, Dark Money, and the Greedy Institution. He is also the director of the Centre for Access to Information and Justice and co-editor of the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons.