Stephan:   Beginning in the 1960s the consciousness of the United States began to change. It was, in my view the result of four trends, the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, the beginning of the environmental movement, all stimulated by the widespread use of Marijuana, formerly considered a Black drug, and especially LSD, which was tried by culture shapers like musicians and artists.   As it happens I knew many of the pioneers in the drug movement such as, Tim Leary, Richard Alpert, and John Lilly and, of course, sampled most those mind-altering substances myself. It completely freaked out the corporate political establishment because it changed people's consciousness and called into question all sorts of assumptions about how society was supposed to operate and to whose benefit. This all came to a crescendo on June 18, 1971 when Richard Nixon, the most criminal president in American history until Donald Trump,  officially declared a “War on Drugs,” stating that drug abuse was “public enemy number one.” The result of that being that hundreds of thousands of young Americans had their lives destroyed. Life sentences for being caught with a handful of marijuana were not unknown. One of the other side-effects of the hysteria about drugs was that the medical uses of psychedelics were stopped or driven underground. Now, decades later when this particular social insanity is not quite as acute, that line of research has re-emerged. Here is a good report on what is going on.