I was recently reading about a drug called ibogaine - which is apparently pretty effective at treating opioid addiction, but is illegal in the US. The drug is prescribed in New Zealand, and the studies I saw made it look like a miracle cure (for most but not all patients).
Infuriating that, in the midst of the opioid crisis, the government wouldn't even consider permitting safe and effective treatment.
You do a disservice to legalization efforts by ignoring the fact that you are discussing a powerful psychedelic. I am all for legalization efforts, but it is important to be clear and upfront about what we are talking about. Tangental to your point; I wonder if the US would currently be facing such an extreme and distressing methamphetamine epidemic if ephedra were still available (recognizing the obvious catch 22 here, as ephedrine is famously used in a variety of stimulant manufacture)
It has a very high rate of serious side effects, and the psychedelic affect makes it worse because already unreliable people (drug addicts) get even more unreliable.
No it doesn't. Everything I've read indicates it's pretty safe with minimal to no serious side effects. Other psychedelics are legal in the US even for recreational use (e.g. Salvia) - so I don't see what the relevance is.
If I google that phrase I get a case study of a man who died after injecting himself with "4 g of ibogaine and 2 g of an uncharacterized ‘booster’ that he bought on the Internet" [1]. On the other hand, there are treatment centers using ibogaine that have been open for decades worldwide. That source also mentions a clinic in the Netherlands that has used ibogaine for approximately 5,000 cases.
This paper [2] is a review of deaths associated with ibogaine known to the authors. They contacted different clinics around the world known to use ibogaine. They found 19 deaths over an 18 year period. 14 of these deaths had post-mortem data and 12 of the 14 had clear comorbidities that likely substantially contributed (e.g. also using heroin and meth, or having severe heart problems already).
You can find a number of papers[3], here is one for example, where no side effects are reported for ibogaine - "In two Phase 1 studies using very low doses, single 20 mg doses of ibogaine were well tolerated (N = 21), with no effect on vital signs and no adverse effects". And, here is the conclusion of that paper, just for fun - "A single ibogaine treatment reduced opioid withdrawal symptoms and achieved opioid cessation or sustained reduced use in dependent individuals as measured over 12 months".
Even if those were valid side effects, you'd still have to put them in context - being an opiod addict is likely much riskier than taking a one time dose of ibogaine in a clinical setting with a doctor's supervision. Net - ibogaine treatment is negative side effect.
The state of medical care in the US is such that the regulators have to be very conservative. This isn’t a sophisticated place with good access or integrated records for care in most cases.
If you’re a high risk patient like an addict, when you end up in the ER for whatever, they’re just going to cut off whatever medication you’re on, keep you from dying, and kick you out as soon as they aren’t liable.
Infuriating that, in the midst of the opioid crisis, the government wouldn't even consider permitting safe and effective treatment.