Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 23 January 2023 to Question 126511 on Psilocybin: Misuse, whether her Department has historic evidence to show that Psilocybin (a) causes harm or (b) has the potential to cause harm.

As the then Crime and Policing Minister set out in his response to Question 7725, psilocybin, in common with a number of drugs which have been controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (the 1971 Act) for a considerable period of time have not been subject to analysis or recent analysis of harm.

The Government has not commissioned or published any recent analysis of the harms of psilocybin. Psilocybin, as an “ester of psilocin”, is controlled as a Class A drug under the the 1971 Act and is placed in Schedule 1 to the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001. Psilocin is also subject to the United Nations Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971, to which the United Kingdom is signatory.