Many startup companies developing psychedelic medicines are struggling to raise money these days. Not Gilgamesh Pharmaceuticals. Founded in 2019, Gilgamesh raised $39m in December. Its original investors came back for the Series B round. It participated in the Y Combinator accelerator for startups. Its founder, Jonathan Sporn, who I met briefly at a party during …
Last week, Filter, a nonprofit journalism website that covers drug policy, published my long (3,000-word) story about the Truth Initiative. Truth Initiative, which was formerly known as the American Legacy Foundation, began in 2000 as an anti-smoking group — by most accounts, a very effective one — and later evolved into a nonprofit that seeks …
Politicians on the left and right valorize small business. As it happens, small businesses create most of the new jobs in the US. Yet businesses that sell e-cigarettes, most of which are family-owned and employ just a few people, are the targets of unrelenting assaults from governments at all levels. My new story for Medium, …
MDMA is an illegal drug that, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, has no medical value and a high potential for abuse. Yet MDMA — better known as ecstasy or molly — is being welcomed into a veterans administration hospital where it will be used to help combat veterans with PTSD. How can that be? …
“In almost every respect imaginable, Prohibition was a failure,” writes Daniel Okrent in Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. The war on drugs has, if anything, been worse. Why, then, do people want to ban e-cigarettes? Or flavored e-cigarettes? Have anti-tobacco warriors like the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and the Truth Initiative and their political allies forgotten history? My …
I wrote a short post yesterday explaining why I am obsessed by very interested in e-cigarettes and tobacco policy. If you are curious, you can read the post here at Medium.
There’s lots of conversation about “best practices” in philanthropy and some about “worst practices,” but almost no one who writes about worst practices is courageous enough to name names. (The invaluable Vu Le of Nonprofit AF is an exception.) This is a problem for the sector. In my latest story for Medium, I write that …
In my new story for @Medium, I try to figure out whether Richard Nixon called Timothy Leary “the most dangerous man in America.” The quote has been published thousands of times. There’s no evidence that Nixon ever said it. You can read the story here.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a progressive champion. Matt Gaetz is a conservative firebrand. They don’t agree on much — except psychedelics. Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, and Gaetz, a Florida Republican, have joined forces in Congress to try to make it easier for scientists to research marijuana and psychedelic drugs, including MDMA and psilocybin. Such bipartisan …
This story began as a conversation in my family–how do we get groceries or order food while trying to shelter at home during the pandemic? Some argue that going to the supermarket is needlessly risky. Others are reluctant to ask others, who are less well off, to assume those risks. We’re having similar debates, as …
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