The American Medical Association (AMA) on LSD

I've recently written about the Journal of the AMA and their apparently favorable view of current prospects that LSD will cure anxiety. There has been unusually strong interest in this. My September 5, 2025 article has received more views than anything I've written in quite a while, and I've noticed recent referrals from websites of the University of Michigan, Northwestern University, MIT, UCLA, USC, University of Colorado, UC/San Diego, and Yale.

This attention from relatively elite academic circles inspired me to research a bit more on the AMA's history in connection to psychedelics. It turns out to be an interesting subject. 

A quick synopsis has the AMA and its publications as not hostile to LSD in the late 1940s and 1950s, when psychiatrists were experimenting with psychedelic and psycholytic therapies. JAMA published a number of articles describing LSD research, mainly focusing on psychiatry, alcoholism, and the biology of hallucinations, as well as the potential of LSD as a promising research tool for simulating schizophrenia. 

Articles in JAMA and affiliated publications highlighted both the potential insights that LSD provided and its risks. The AMA’s general stance during this period was to support controlled, clinical use in psychiatric research, but not public or unsupervised use. This corresponds with my own research for a history thesis in the 1990s. Celebrity nutritionist Adelle Davis (writing under the pseudonym "Jane Dunlap") and her social circle seemed to cling to a belief that early LSD research was legitimate and respectable, even though it was secretive and obviously controlled by military and intelligence psychological warfare interests.

By the early 1960s, LSD escaped the laboratory. Figures like Timothy Leary popularized it, and use quickly spread to college campuses and youth counterculture. The AMA began raising concerns about safety issues (bad trips, psychotic breaks, accidents), the lack of standardized medical protocols, and increasing recreational use outside medical supervision. By 1966, the AMA released statements warning against unsupervised use and supporting tighter regulation. JAMA editorials described LSD as both a valuable research tool and a serious danger if misused. 

In short, this paragon of medical orthodoxy was happy to toe the line that we know was laid down by the CIA from the early 1950s straight through the Haight-Ashbury hippie era, and continuing into the more recent "war on drugs" decades. Now in the 2020s,  JAMA ostentatiously pushes the agenda of MindMed, "a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing novel product candidates to treat brain health disorders..." (ticker symbol MNMD; contact Chris Brinzey, Investor Relations ICR Westwicke, ir@mindmed.co).

It simply means LSD for general anxiety, LSD for the multitudes, LSD for kids, LSD for the world!

Who's behind the scenes now? Plus ça change.