ENCOD Report on nUse of Drugs and Advocay

Every therapeutic potential of plants and natural products should be carefully researched and if proven safe and effective in certain conditions, made available to the public - also when it derives from a forbidden substance, whatever the reason of the prohibition.

This is self-evident, or it should be, but in a number of instances, there are indications that no sufficient research is being done into potential therapeutic applications, and that promising trials are being obstructed. Some of these instances are: cannabis, MDMA and other "psychedelic" substances, such as iboga, ayahuasca, LSD, but also coca leaves or amphetamine.

Types of conditions repeatedly stated to respond favorably to treatment with psychedelics include chronic alcoholism, criminal psychopathy, sexual deviations and neuroses, depressive states, phobias, anxiety neuroses. In addition, psychedelics have been used with autistic children, to make them more responsive and to improve behavior and attitudes; with terminal cancer patients, to ease both the physical pain and the anguish of dying; and with adult schizophrenics, to condense the psychosis temporarily and to help predict its course of development.

Since the early 1960s, iboga and its active ingredient ibogaine has been administered in the Western world to treat drug dependence and other psychological disorders.

Recently positive effects anti-viral and immune-modulatory effects have been reproted in treatment of hepatitis C, herpes simplex, asthma, and even multiple sclerosis.

Use of coca leaves is reported to have antibacterial and parasital effects in the treatment of stomach pains, infections and diarrhea, it reduces fever, has anestesic effects during childbirth, in case of head- tooth- and muscle aches, as well as irritations to skin and eye. Likewise, use of coca leaves has a regulatory effect on blood circulation, heartbeat, lung diseases such as asthma, altitude sickness and emboly, a stimulating effect in case of impotence and other forms of fatigue, and a calming and anelgesic effect in case of central nervous disorders.

The therapeutical use of cocaine is limited to a local anaesthetic for surgery.