A study of more than 25,000 people under community corrections supervision suggests the use of psychedelic drugs like LSD can keep people out of prison.

The research is the first in 40 years to examine whether drugs like LSD and ‘magic” mushrooms can help reform criminals.

‘Our results provide a notable exception to the robust positive link between substance use and criminal behavior,” the researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine wrote in their study, which was published in the January issue of the Journal of Psychopharmacology.

‘They add to both the older and emerging body of data indicating beneficial effects of hallucinogen interventions, and run counter to the legal classification as well as popular perception of hallucinogens as categorically harmful substances with no therapeutic potential.”

Psychedelic substances piqued the interest of researchers beginning in the 1950s. Studies indicated that the drugs could be combined with psychotherapy to treat a number of conditions, including alcoholism and drug addiction.

But scientific investigations into the therapeutic potential of LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, and other psychedelic drugs ground to a halt in the 1970s, when they were outlawed by the federal Controlled Substances Act.

‘Offenders may be especially likely to benefit from […]