The Psychedelic Industry is Biopiracy
What does this mean for consumers and advocates?
Surprise! I decided to change it up a bit and share a new piece, fresh from the brain cells:
Thus far, all of my posts on this particular Substack have consisted of excerpts from my recent book, Drugism. As you’ve probably noticed, however, the landscape around drugs continues to change rapidly in the US and around the world. Human rights-oriented perspectives on drug use which, just a few years ago, would have been considered unfit to print have found themselves inching closer and closer toward the Overton window.
One such concept that has gained currency recently but which I was more or less unaware of when writing Drugism is that of biopiracy. I’d probably heard the word a couple times here and there but didn’t particularly dwell on it. Though I am not proud to admit it, I can thank YouTube’s algorithm for reintroducing the concept to me and making sure this time it got my attention. (Yes, YouTube…I know, sometimes my research methods are so sophisticated even I am stunned.)
What is biopiracy?
Biopiracy occurs when corporations or other private actors claim ownership of natural resources and/or the ways in which they are utilized. It typically involves resources that have been used by indigenous communities, in many cases for thousands of years. Biopiracy itself has existed for centuries, if not millennia.
The term—which is said to have been coined in the early 1990s by Canadian environmentalist Pat Roy Mooney—has grown popular with some help from the renowned environmental activist Vandana Shiva. Back in 1997, she published a book called Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge. Although it took a couple decades, the term and the concept it represents eventually made its way into mainstream awareness.
Shiva offers several key revelations about biopiracy which help flesh out the definition given above. Some points to note, among many others:
1. Biopiracy is deeply intertwined in the process(es) of colonization
2. It is generally accompanied by a reductionist and often Eurocentric mentality
3. It is typically done for the purpose of accruing capital and accordingly takes the form of capitalist exploitation
Many of the most common substances in our day-to-day lives are unfortunately the products of biopiracy, including a plethora of staple foods, numerous spices, sugar, coffee, cannabis, tobacco, and more. The process also describes how the most popular illegal and/or otherwise restricted drugs such as opium, coca, and their respective derivatives (opioids, cocaine, etc.) rose to global prominence.
And, as the main argument of this piece posits—forgive me for burying the lead—most of the drugs commonly referred to as psychedelics (i.e. an oddly specific array of tryptamines and phenethylamines) are themselves products of biopiracy. Indeed, the entire industry around these substances is arguably one big orgy of biopiracy.
How I got here
For years I’ve studied and written about how various drugs have been subjected to the forces of colonization and capitalism. For example, in my first book, we’re here, we’re high (2018), I wrote about how the modern medical psilocybin market owes its start to the banker/mycophile Gordon Wasson and the abusive practices he engaged in toward the now legendary Mazatec curandera Maria Sabina.1
After showing up uninvited in Oaxaca, Mexico, Wasson manipulated Maria Sabina in a number of ways in order to obtain psilocybin mushrooms and participate in her veladas (healing ceremonies). He then returned to the states and consulted with pharmaceutical executives at Merck about potential rights to the mushroom’s alkaloids.
And in my most recent book, Drugism, I discuss how the modern demand for drugs like DMT and ayahuasca is rooted in a long (and violent) history of colonization that goes back to the voyages of Columbus. The point being, I am no stranger to the degree to which colonialism and capitalism permeate the modern markets for and cultures around many of my favorite drugs, and I’ve spent a considerable amount of time teaching others about these connections. So when I learned about the concept of biopiracy, I realized immediately that it was quite relevant to the drugs in question.
This happened just a couple months ago, when I came across a YouTube video about biopiracy that captured my attention. As I started to watch it, I thought “Aha! This perfectly encapsulates what is happening to shrooms and DMT.” I made a mental note to write about how the concept of biopiracy connects to the market for these drugs.
Of course, I am not the only one who has made the connection. A few days ago, an acquaintance who I met through drug policy advocacy shared an article on Facebook. Titled “Psychedelics Are Surging—at the Expense of Indigenous Communities,” it also caught my eye. It had been published on The Daily Beast, which is not exactly an outlet I would’ve associated with meaningful psychedelic critique, but I was pleasantly surprised to see it nonetheless. And I was delighted, in fact, when I noticed that the article’s author Simon Spichak prominently used the term biopiracy to describe much of what is occurring within and around the industry.
How we got here
While the article from the The Daily Beast is a great start, there remains much to be said on the theme of biopiracy in the psychedelic industry. Arguably the entire sector is itself a product of biopiracy, for it would not exist without the systematic extraction of valuable medicines from indigenous cultures.
Consider for example that Ramon Pane, who accompanied Christopher Columbus on his voyage to what is now Haiti in 1496, noted the use of cohoba, a DMT-containing plant known taxonomically as Anadenanthera peregrina, among the native Taino people that the colonist fleet encountered there. In doing so, Pane became the first known European to document the use of DMT-containing plants in the western hemisphere.
Later, in the nineteenth century, European explorer/botanists Alexander von Humboldt (the namesake of California’s Humboldt County) and Richard Spruce collected samples of other DMT-containing plants which they found among the people of the Orinoco region which borders Colombia and Venezuela. They sent these samples back to Europe to be studied by other botanists and chemists, etc. To my knowledge, the people who introduced Humboldt and Spruce to these substances—whose ancestors had worked with them ritually for generations—did not receive any royalty payments as reimbursement for doing so.
As I wrote in Drugism, the drive to explore, dominate, and extract resources was at play in the work of Pane, Humboldt, and Spruce. Their actions represent the beginning of a continuous process of biopiracy that has identified, extracted, and commodified a cascade of substances which have been cherry-picked from the best that indigenous medicine has to offer.
The same thing happened to ayahuasca, psilocybin mushrooms, lysergamide-bearing morning glories, mescaline-containing cacti, and so on. The very word psychedelic was coined by a psychiatrist named Humphrey Osmond after he met with pharmaceutical executives to discuss the commercial development of the medicinal compounds in morning glories, or ololiuqui.
As such, we are apt to recognize that the concept of biopiracy, in which corporations or private actors lay claim to natural resources and the ways they are used, is disturbingly applicable to the various methods by which substances such as psilocybin, DMT, and mescaline have been developed and popularized.
Unfortunately, this trend continues in the actions of today’s psychedelic pharmaceutical companies, who have proceeded to capitalize on the knowledge which came to us from ancient indigenous lineages via Wall Street bankers and Ivy League academics. The use of erroneous patents and the wholesale theft of entire modalities of use without legal acknowledgement or financial compensation is rife throughout the quickly-growing industry.
What does it all mean?
There are a number of implications for consumers and advocates. The ramifications of biopiracy are difficult to escape in part because they are so thoroughly enmeshed with capitalism, which itself incentivizes rapid growth and consumption. From a consumer’s or advocate’s perspective, if one champions these drugs’ indigenous heritage but does absolutely nothing to actually respect, compensate, or preserve that heritage (beyond whatever drugs it has to offer us), one participates directly in said biopiracy.
To whatever extent we celebrate these medicines’ connection to indigenous cultures, such celebration is bound to be merely performative unless it is accompanied by concrete acts of solidarity with indigenous populations. And arguably, those who merely champion these drugs’ roots in native cultures but continue to disregard actual native populations only exacerbate the matter by widening the already enormous gap between professed intent and action.
But there is at least one positive aspect to our current position. The commercial tryptamine-and-phenethylamine (i.e. “psychedelic”) industry is still in its early stages and consumer choice is still a particularly powerful force, something which will likely no longer be the case when the industry has consolidated down to two or three key players with Congress in their pocket.
The industry—like any industry—vitally depends upon the people who consume its products. They will inevitably need to respond to consumer interests if they want to build and maintain positive brand reputations. And consumers increasingly care where their products come from, and whether they have been made in equitable and sustainable ways. If consumers can manage to make their preferences known—for example, preferences for products that have been obtained in just and equitable ways—they can change industry practice. After all, without us—the consumers—these companies are worthless.
Another option, one which takes even more time but which does occasionally produce meaningful results, is to seek legal recourse. Biopiracy involves not only theft of natural resources but also theft of labor, specifically the labor that goes into the identification of said resources and the development, often over generations, of ideal preparation and consumption methods. While the legal framework around biopiracy is practically nonexistent at present, if a substantial legal framework does develop, this labor aspect could prove vital to any potential litigation that might ensue as a result of the biopiracy that is happening right now as you read this.
In conclusion…
As we can see, biopiracy is a particularly disruptive process which has been integral to the development and popularization of not only tryptamines and phenethylamines but also that of many (perhaps most) popular drugs. Biopiracy is nothing new, however, and is responsible for countless products in our daily lives. The issue of biopiracy is ubiquitous throughout the agriculture, chemical, pharmaceutical, and biotech industries. While biopiracy has produced some of the world’s favorite products, it has done so at the expense of indigenous populations.
The psychedelic industry qualifies as biopiracy not only in the simplest sense in that it meets the definition provided at the start of this piece. It also perfectly exemplifies the criteria discussed by Vandana Shiva. The drugs which this industry centers around are themselves deeply intertwined with colonial processes; they were introduced into our own consumer culture by people with reductionist and Eurocentric worldviews; and they have become instruments of capitalist exploitation.
Still, there remains much to be said on the issue. This piece is intended to function merely as an introduction to a topic which deserves several volumes’ worth of discourse. I hope, nonetheless, that it inspires some thought, and will be even more thrilled if its inspires some action.
Wasson worked at J. P. Morgan from 1934-1963 where he specialized in public relations and held a Vice President position. He traced his professional interest in mushrooms to “a fateful meeting” in the late 1930s in which he and his wife Valentina (a physician from Russia) decided “to launch a systemic and massive assault on many fronts,” in his own words. See Brown and Brown, The Psychedelic Gospels (2016) and Wasson, et. al, Persephone’s Quest (1986).
Some years later, Wasson traveled to Oaxaca, Mexico to scout out the mushrooms which the Mazatec—the indigenous population native to the area—were said to use for healing and prayer. There, he met Maria Sabina. Wasson then fabricated a false pretense in order to obtain the mushrooms, recorded and photographed Sabina’s mushroom rituals (or veladas) without her consent (and against traditional instruction which advised against recording ceremonies), and performed nonconsensual experiments on her with LSD and other drugs. On at least one of his visits to Mexico, Wasson was accompanied by the MK-ULTRA house chemist James Moore. See Rado, we’re here, we’re high (2018) and Letcher, Shroom (2006).