Crewman-Chu

In the age of the internet, people have become more inclined to examine things critically rather than take things at face value because of the increased distrust of the press as a whole.

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Do you have any data to support this idea? I think the opposite is true, and I've come across some data (cited in The Washington Post) that seems to back that up. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/06/16/six-in-10-of-you-will-share-this-link-without-reading-it-according-to-a-new-and-depressing-study/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.49a2eb5bf012

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/03/19/americans-read-headlines-and-not-much-else/?utm_term=.202a8bd3f284

First, I want to thank you all for the work you do. I just graduated from journalism school (studying strategic communication), and drug policy is one of my chief areas of interest. You're doing a great job, and I look forward to helping your cause(s) in any way I can.

I see a lot of parallels and similarities between issues involving cannabis and psychedelics (e.g., prohibition, propaganda, medicinal use, legalization). Just as people have been lied to and intentionally frightened about cannabis, they have been lied to and intentionally frightened about psychedelics. Just as the government falsely claims that cannabis has no medicinal value and blocks the research to prove otherwise, it does the same with psychedelics. We've made a lot of progress in the fight for sensible cannabis policy, but the fight for psychedelics is just getting warmed up.

What do you think will be different (easier or more difficult) in the fight to research, normalize and legalize psychedelics for responsible and therapeutic use, as opposed to the fight for cannabis?

What have we learned from the history of cannabis prohibition and re-legalization (beginning with California's medical cannabis law in 1996) that we can use in our efforts to combat the fear, misinformation, stigma and prohibition of psychedelics?

This question is mostly for Bryce Montgomery with MAPS, but I'm sure you all have valuable insight! I'm interested in hearing about your communication strategy. Who are your main target audiences? What are the main messages that you try to get across to them, and how do you go about doing that? How do you measure the effectiveness of your communications? Is it more important to target and change the minds of average citizens, politicians or medical/scientific professionals?