It all starts with the UN … Great interview by Talking Drugs.org
One of the biggest barriers to global drug policy reform is countries’ need to adhere to international drug control regimes, also known as the UN conventions on drugs. While there have been a lot of advocacy efforts to change their national implementation, a coalition of drug policy reform named International Therapeutic Psilocybin Rescheduling Initiative (ITPRI) has been set up to push for greater change at the UN level.
Founded just at the start of 2022, TalkingDrugs came across ITPRI mostly through the collaboration of its international partners: big names like the Beckley Foundation, Drug Science, and MAPS are all ITPRI partners, alongside Nierika AC, Heroic Hearts UK, Open Foundation, Osmond Foundation, Mind Medicine Australia and a patient advocacy group soon to be announced. All these partners have coalesced into an organisation focused on one singular goal: the rescheduling of psilocybin from the 1971 UN Convention.
We spoke with Chris Koddermann, one of the co-founders of ITPRI. Originally from Canada but now based in Switzerland, he has worked in several government and public affairs roles throughout his career, and has now established his own company public affairs company. Calling from his family home, Chris spoke on why he got involved with this project in the first place, and how ITPRI plans to reach its objective of rescheduling psilocybin. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Could you tell me a bit about your background and how you got involved with ITPRI?
Koddermann: I’m a lawyer by training but spent the early part of my career working in Canadian politics. So I was a political and policy advisor to several different liberal governments in Canada. I then spent a number of years in the corporate sector, doing government affairs, public policy/communications type roles, some of which involved a fairly international focus. And then I got tired of working for big companies and set up my own public affairs consultancy about three years ago, and that’s how I make my living, doing government affairs type work, with a significant focus on Geneva based UN permanent missions, WHO, international institutions etc.
My interest in the psychedelic space, and sort of the genesis of ITPRI, you know, I had read Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool Aid Acid Test when I was like 14, therefore becoming aware of Ken Kesey’s involvement in the CIA studies in the early 1960s. And through it I became aware of some of the early research that had gone on. Then I had experiences with a number of these compounds in my 20s and developed an appreciation for the power of these drugs. And so I was kind of primed when I started reading a number of years ago about the resurgence in the research into various therapeutic applications of psilocybin, LSD and various other compounds, and had also been similarly following the long saga around the rescheduling of cannabis.
It was clear that nobody is pursuing the rescheduling of psilocybin or any of these other compounds that were being studied for therapeutic purposes. There’s lots of writing on the topic and the inappropriateness of this current scheduling regime, and so on and so forth. And so I really saw an opportunity to launch an initiative with a coalition of partners to try and get psilocybin out of Schedule 1, which is really the problem. You know, I think the issue isn’t that it’s scheduled in the first place, although one could argue about that. It’s the fact that it’s in Schedule 1. And that schedule really creates a whole layer of obligations on governments in terms of domestic controls that really sort of gum up the system when it comes to advancing the science and the research.
Have you considered through ITPRI or any other kind of advocacy efforts to work on the decriminalisation of psilocybin? Or is the target to start shifting psilocybin from at least from Schedule 1 into any other schedule?
Koddermann: We’re really focused on rescheduling under the 1971 UN Convention.
Read the full interview at https://www.talkingdrugs.org/the-plan-to-reschedule-psilocybin-at-the-un
