Caitlin Moran on the prime minister’s psychedelics policy, what it reveals about the government’s relationship with clinical evidence, and the specific comedy available in this story
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
Starmer’s Psychedelics: The Policy Story That Writes Itself and Keeps Writing
Keir Starmer wants psychedelic drugs prescribed on the NHS. I want to sit with this sentence for a moment because it is doing a lot of work. The sentence contains: a prime minister whose public persona is that of a man who has read every policy document and filed it alphabetically; a class of drugs whose cultural associations are comprehensively at odds with that persona; the NHS, which is simultaneously Britain’s most beloved institution and an organisation that cannot always provide two-week cancer referrals; and the word “prescribed,” which suggests a framework of medical legitimacy that the tabloid response to this news has not engaged with.
The clinical evidence for psilocybin in treatment-resistant depression is genuine and substantial and is being taken seriously by medical researchers at institutions including Imperial College London. The correct response to this evidence, for a government committed to evidence-based health policy, is to fund further research and consider regulatory pathways for clinical use. This is what Starmer appears to be doing. The satire opportunity is not in the policy itself but in the specific comedy of a politician who has never once given the impression of having done anything more chemically adventurous than a strong tea announcing a policy position that his backbenchers will require several months of careful briefing to process.
The Backbencher Response
The backbencher response I am anticipating is not opposition to the clinical evidence but the specific political management problem of explaining to a constituency that returned you on a platform of serious responsible governance that your government is now exploring whether magic mushrooms should be available on prescription. The management problem is real. The policy may be correct. Both things are simultaneously true and together they produce the column I am writing. Managing the gap between evidence and politics is what governments do; the department of grim laughter is monitoring the backbench WhatsApp groups. I am monitoring the department.
