MAPS Canada Responds to Alberta’s New Regulation for Psychedelic Drug Treatment Services
Alberta’s new Regulation for Psychedelic Drug Treatment Services was implemented on January 16th. Prior to its implementation, MAPS Canada hosted a webinar in December to discuss its implications. The webinar was well-attended, with approximately 100 participants. We collected the questions posed by the presenters and participants, organized them, and shared them with the Alberta regulators.
On January 17th, board members Rev Darda and Rielle Capler met with Alberta regulators to review these questions. One clear takeaway was that the mandate and focus of the Regulation and Service Standards was on safety, not accessibility. Over the following weeks, the regulators answered further questions as we delved into our analysis. We are every appreciative of the productive and collaborative engagement we have had with the Alberta regulators, and look forward to continuing our dialogue and working together in support of safe and accessible psychedelic drug treatment services for Albertans.
This legislation clearly fall short of improving access to healing and life saving medicines and even reduces access to already legal medicines. Thus the legislation is preventing healing and even costing lives in the middle of a mental health crisis. It could be useful to provide contact information for legislators who might be influenced to rewrite this legislation.