Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the witnesses.
In this study, we are examining best practices on how to incorporate traditional knowledge into science. I find that even that mindset is very rigid, but in using the concept or trying to look at, for example, the use of psychedelics in medical therapy and psychotherapy as one example of how to do that, I'm wondering if I can explore with the witnesses a few assumptions—or maybe misassumptions—that our current systems utilize.
Mr. Mays, I think you touched on some of them.
Particularly when I look at the dialogue on government's approach to the regulation of substances or the use of substances like psilocybin, potentially in psychotherapy, first of all, there's a stigma about it, which is that somehow this couldn't be used. I do wonder if that's born partially out of racism, due to the fact that it has been incorporated in traditional practices over time.
Conversely, I also wonder, as western practices are seeking to incorporate the use of those substances in traditional practices, how we avoid cultural appropriation during that process as well. I think that as westerners we're often inclined just to think, “Okay, well, if we stick this thing into a pill and give it to somebody, it's going to work the same way as a full traditional ceremony.”
Taking what you said up to a 100,000-foot view, and using psychedelics as an example of how to incorporate or how not to incorporate or to respect traditional knowledge in, let's say, western medicine, how can we avoid some of these things? What are the best practices? Can you point us to some of the work you've undertaken that the committee should perhaps look at for additional sources?