Authors
Octavian Dixon Ritchie, Cameron N Donley and Gabrielle Dixon Ritchie
Published
September 6, 2023
Background
On February 3, 2023, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care, announced that on July 1, 2023, the psychedelics 3′4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) and psilocybin will be medically accessible and regulated for psychiatric use in the treatment of treatment-resistant post-traumatic stress disorder (TR-PTSD) and treatment-resistant depression (TRD), respectively (TGA, 2023). The regulation of these psychedelics has been a legal and medical contention since July 15, 2020, when the Australian charity Mind Medicine Australia Ltd (MMA), publicly applied to reschedule MDMA and psilocybin from Schedule 9 (S9) prohibited drugs to Schedule 8 (S8) controlled drugs in a medical setting (MMA, 2020a; MMA, 2020b). The new legislative reform of MDMA and psilocybin by the TGA will allow patients with ethics approval by a Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) to access MDMA or psilocybin outside of a clinical trial setting, through Australian psychiatrists granted Authorised Prescriber Scheme approval for prescribing these psychedelics.
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