WASHINGTON (AP) — A psychedelic advocacy group has brought MDMA — the illegal party drug also known as ecstasy — to the brink of medical legitimacy after 32 years of trying.
The Food and Drug Administration has labeled the drug a potential "breakthrough" for post-traumatic stress disorder and cleared late-stage studies of up to 300 patients that will begin screening this month.
If successful, MDMA would become the first illegal psychedelic drug, now in the same restrictive category as heroin and cocaine, to win approval as a prescription medicine.
The advocacy group was founded by Rick Doblin, who became convinced as a teenager in the tumultuous 1960s that psychedelic drugs like LSD could be the antidote to mankind's destructive tendencies.
Doblin's ultimate goal is the legalization of all psychedelics for recreational use.
