New research from Imperial College London purporting a breakthrough in treating depression using the active ingredient found in magic mushrooms grabbed headlines here in the UK this week.
However, in North America, more familiar with the potential of psilocybin in mental health and addiction, it will be treated with a collective ‘meh’.
For the findings have echoes of the scientific results delivered by the likes of Johns Hopkins and Harvard, or commercially by Compass Pathways (NASDAQ:CMPS) (admittedly a UK company but listed in the US).
It’s not to say the Imperial data doesn’t add to the sum total of knowledge on the subject.
As professor David Nutt, head of the university’s Centre for Psychedelic Research, points out: "These findings are important because for the first time we find that psilocybin works differently from conventional antidepressants."
The results confirm what has long been posited, that so called psychedelic drugs change and increase the brain’s interconnectivity in a way traditional pills don’t.
Imperial’s work builds a bedrock of research and scientific data for a business model that works against type for the drugs industry – one working for the common good.
For so-called psychedelic treatments have the potential to tackle the scourge of depression that, according to the World Health Organisation, affects 300 million people worldwide, as well as alcoholism, and other stubborn, pernicious addictions.
Guilt by association
Psilocybin garners a lot of the headlines, but productive and progressive mental health rehabilitation is also being carried out using mescaline, LSD and DMT.
Psychedelics have always suffered the problem of guilt by association.
During the 60s and 70s it was link was with the hippy counter-culture movement.
Today, it is the read-across from cannabis and, specifically, the free-for-all in Canada and the US that has come with liberalised recreational weed.
Let’s be clear, psychedelics in the vast majority of cases are being developed as novel drugs (so, within the confines of the clinic) or are being administered in the mental health setting by specially trained physicians or healthcare workers. This is not tea-and-a-trance student stuff.
We also know that in the main, psychedelics such as psilocybin and LSD are relatively safe.
According to Office for National Statistics figures there were fewer than 10 deaths related to the substances in the UK – not just last year, but back to 1993.
Down the rabbit hole
I won’t compare that with either smoking or drinking as we’ll dive down a completely different rabbit hole here, but you get the gist around safety.
It’s also fair to say there is plenty of historic data to support current research and development efforts on which the likes of Imperial, Johns Hopkins et al can build.
Imperial’s work is of course at the cutting edge of research into psychedelics – my opening gambit was designed to irritate and make the reader acknowledge there is a world outside British academia.
But there are reasons why North America is ahead of the UK in this field, particularly commercially.
There is a familiarity with once-verboten drugs borne of the cannabis revolution at the legislative, operational and commercial levels that just doesn’t exist on this side of the Atlantic.
The capital markets are receptive too, yes, peripheral bourses such as the CSE, NEO and OTC, but also the Nasdaq, which is host to Compass Pathways (NASDAQ:CMPS).
And then there is the entrepreneurial desire, particularly north of the US-Canada border.
North America
Those former mining execs with a hollowed-out shell company have been quick to pivot into psychedelics (admittedly not with 100% success).
There are now around 50 psychedelics businesses traded on US and Canadian exchanges compared with a handful in the old country.
The investor community here in the UK may have one trump card – it has the second mover advantage of learning from North America’s mistakes.
Often it is those late to the game (Tesla vs GM in electric cars, Apple vs Nokia in phones) that win the game.
So, it will be interesting to see how the market develops here in the UK.