Hi, I'm Ethan Natalman, and this is Psychoactive, a production of iHeart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the show where we talk about all things drugs. But any views expressed here do not represent those of iHeart Media, Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, heed, as an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not even represent my own. And nothing contained in this show should be used as medical advice or encouragement to use any type of drug. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. Today's guest is Sineon Schnapper. He is the co founder and director of the j l S Fund, which is one of the more significant investment funds placing bets basically and learning the whole field of psychedelics, innovation and psychedelics business. I said, say, I just met Simeon, and interestingly enough, through another guest of Psychoactive. It was Leonard Picard, who some of you may have listened to. He was in town, we were getting to know one another and then he brings me over to meet his buddy Simeon Snapper, and we hit it off and so full disclosure, Uh, you know, after hitting it off, he asked me to be an advisor to this fund, so I had a you know, full disclosure, I'm an advisor to Simeon's Jails fund, and one of the one of the implications of that is that if it does well, I'll make some money as a result. Um. But also as a result, I've enjoyed getting to know him and really coming to appreciate the extent to which he is respected, admired and liked in this psychedelics area. And he's also one of the people on the investment side who's been involved in this space, not just investment but psychedelics for quite a long time. So Simeon, welcome, Thank you so much. Ethan. Well, you know, we we recently crossed paths at uh this wonderful conference in New York called the Horizons Conference. I mean, actually the month before that we were down in Miami at the Miami Wonderland Conference on in Business, which was a more heavily business one. Horizons goes back, you know, fourteen years. I think I spoke at the first one of their conference in New York back in two thousand and seven. But it's really growing in leaps and bounds, and there was this incredible energy going on, and and there is truly a psychedelic renaissance underway right now. And why do you think it's happening now? Um, There's so many ways to answer it, but the default is kind of the conflation of you know, three major things happening. You have, you know, regulatory stuff from the f d A with breakthrough designation. You have the decriminalization of psycho alex and or even the legalization. You have a velocity of research coming out of universities, etcetera, etcetera. And this is all being powered fueled by you know, what we call generating alpha, which is money and the energy of money. So it's really this perfect fire that's, in our opinion, creating this renaissance. You know, I've mentioned on Psychoactive many times my friend Rick Doblin, who founded MAPS back in the mid nineteen eighties and has just been the trooper building this thing in an incredible way. And for so long it was all about philanthropic contributions, just as I rely on philathropic contributions to build Drug Policy Alliance and uh, you know and run the ballot initiatives and all that sort of stuff. But now there's this remarkable infusion of funding. I think more a lot on the philanthropic side, but that's now I think being sort of dwarfed on the investment side. Yes, it is, and it's it's very delicate too. I mean there's the pure play you know, venture capitalists or private equity or just investor on the money side, and then there's how do you invest into psychedelics. But for me, it's always been this interesting dance between the drug world and the the energy in the world of money. I can imagine it's a fascinating well. I mean, right now, I see there's some companies that have gone public that I have billion dollar valuations on the market. Are we going to see many more companies going that way and many more billion billion dollar valuations? Easily? I think you're gonna see a lot of news and you know, this first quarter of two you're also going to see a shift probably from mental health to you know, everything in central nervous system and anything that's inflammation from Alzheimer's to Parkinson's, uh, etcetera. But for right now, you're definitely seeing the bunch of companies going public and attaining you know what people call you know, unicorn status, that billion dollar plusvaluation on senior exchanges. For me, it's, you know, it's exciting. It's to some extent, something I've been waiting for for you know, a few decades. I've always loved starting something new, and I've always loved, if done intelligently and done ethically, how provocative and important money could be to help move the needle. And then of course I've always loved the substances. So it's an exciting time for this all to be uh kind of colliding if you will. Yeah, well, let's break it down for our audience then. So, I mean there was MAPS that was out there first and real true pioneer Rick Doblin and his colleagues raising tensive millions of dollars to move forward with studies on using M D M A a K ecstasy to treat PTSD, And they've been moving that process through the FDA for many years and there's a possibility they think it's quite likely in fact, that the FDA will give a green light, uh two years from now for this to be basically allowed for doctors to prescribe UM. But MAPS was always involved in, you know, doing everything from philanthropists, and now they've created a public benefit corporation, basically a for profit corporation owned by the nonprofit organization. They've just made a deal with you know, a major investor and I think seventy billion dollars to help finish this off. UM. So I you know, and I know Rick Doblin has been worried about the role of money emerging too quickly in this space, but he also sees it as essential. Do you have worries? I think worry would be too strong, but concern. I could, you know, to some great extent empathize though with Rick, right. I mean, there was all this progress for decades purely philanthropically, um, and then something shifted, you know, about three years ago with the kind of this opening of wait, these are really important molecules and there's really important science going on, and is this at a capital markets opportunity? So I could definitely empathize with Rick and others who have done such an amazing job of raising capital or getting the donors to get m d M A where it is. But there's a lot of other molecules and other indications, and you know, I think it just kind of got to this point where it's like, Okay, maybe we can do something unique. Yeah, you know. You know, Rick talks about having in some respects's been a victim of his own success in raising so much money moving this thing forward, and I can relate because, you know, forever and ever, in raising the money to legalize marijuana, first for medical purposes and then more broadly, it was entirely grounded in philanthropic contributions. And even in the last years I was doing this in fifteen sixteen, even when I could raise a little bit of money from folks in the marijuana industry, you know, it was always clear I would talk to those guys because they were stakeholders, but I would never try to raise money from them until after we had drafted the ballot initiatives. We didn't want them to have undo influence over it. And then once we won the California initiative in twenty sixteen, everybody saw it was like game over. Marijuana is going to be legalized across the country. And at that point, basically many of the philanthropists were saying, ethan at this point rely on the for profit guys. I've been giving you the money and getting my taxi or they couldn't get tax deductions for the ballot initiatives, but I've been doing it philanthropically, it doesn't really make any sense anymore. So I think Rick sometimes now find themselfs competing right to get philanthropic contributions when many of the rich guys who want to put this money in are saying, let me just invest the whole thing, you know, for profit. Why give away money when I could be just you know, getting a return on my investment very directly, It's a really difficult argument to win sometimes. And you know, maps and Rick is one of uh several in this space who you know, I've all either worked with personally or have known over the years, and I would is way off, like, you know, to two and a half years ago when we started you know, quote unquote deploying capital in the space. I thought this is gonna really benefit the nonprofits too, and I just I totally missed that because then I sat down with, you know, to your whole point, people who had been donors in the space for a long time, and I'm talking to them about our fund and our o eyes and you know, quote unquote making money as well as doing good, and a lot of them were like, well, wait a minute. If I'm investing and it's going to be the same outcome, why wouldn't I invest and get a return which I could donate to another industry or another area that isn't that far along um in integrating capital markets to solve a big problem. So it was a big like like really, yeah, I mean you see all these universities now being up with research institutes right or you know, or hostibly and why you land going in New York, Johns Hopkins, University of California, Imperial College in London. Uh, you know, I know this programs at Harvard and Yale and just more and more popping up, either into you know, a few a few researchers or sometimes entire projects. Uh. Are those being funded purely philanthropically or is it a mixed investment where the investors are going to have some profitability to be made from those investments. Yeah, it's definitely more of the ladder, and each of the ones you mentioned are unique and how they're structuring. I've definitely had the opportunity to participate on drafting of several and I've kind of watched certain ones evolve over the years, but generally UM. The bigger ones are contemplating an interdisciplinary approach where they're accessing everything the universities have to offer. So it's not just the chemistry. It's the political science, it's the anthropology, it's the math, it's the academic computing. So that benefits them from recruiting new students to just on the science side and the research side. There's always been I P and licensing deals out of universities. That's why some universities, I mean, if you really dig into the balance sheets, have these endowments that are massive. And a lot of those endowments was not just alumni donations or you know, they had antiquities from some bygone era that appreciated in value, but it was some of the deals that flowed into the university UM from various departments that had either had royalties or i P assignments with royalties, etcetera. So I'm watching a whole mess of universities and colleges kind of look at this and say, wait, if A, B and C are doing it, why aren't we setting up a psychedelic institute. And I had a call from a provost even a month ago, and this is from a community college they don't even have a chemistry and re church department. And he's like, Hey, what do you know about this, uh this institute thing? Should we do one of those? And I'm like, and I just was like, what is happening? Well, I mean, I see me. I'll tell you a funny story about that. Rick called me last year, a year and a half ago, and he wanted me to introduce him to Kurt Smoke. Now, Kurt Smoke was the mayor of Baltimore in the late eighties. Uh, and he was the one who surprised everybody by calling for a major reconsideration the drug war and drug prohibition at the same time that I was a young assistant professor Princeton making similar arguments. And he and I became the kind of you know, the Baltimore mayor and the Princeton professor making these arguments. And then he moved on from being mayor, you know, he became the protost I think at Howard University, and now he's the president of the University of Baltimore, which is basically the City College of Baltimore. And Rick wanted to meet him because the guy who founded Go Daddy, he actually was interested in the issue of veterans and veterans mental health and psychelics research and d m A. And he I think was one of the biggest donors of University of Baltimore, and so it was all about saying whether this local college, University of Baltimore, could begin to have a little psychedelics you know, research component to it. So I think you're exactly right. It's not just the major institutions, you know, it's a whole bunch of others. Let's take a break here and go to an ad. Now, let's just step back for a second. You know, a lot of the focus right now is on M d M A getting approved with maps effort by the f d A. And the other one that everybody talks about is this company called Compass, started by the Goldsmiths um which also now has a billion dollar plus valuation in the markets, which is looking at psilocybin I think, to treat depression, right, And that's the other one that people are optimistic will be approved by the FDA in coming years. And so what else is on the horizon in terms of potential treatments or companies that look to be third, fourth, and fifth in this place, or is that the sixty four dollar question for you as an investor in all of this. Yeah, I would say it's a sixty three thousand dollar question because there's no it's not a matter of um of if you know from our thesis, it's a matter of when. So whether it's if we're just talking at the molecular level, you know, M d M A versus psilocybin versus five M e O d M T versus LSD. There's so many studies happening right now, and there's so much promise that it's really going to be based on the teams that are able to execute faster. Just to back up for seconds, So for our listeners, when Seeming is referring to a psilocybin, he's talking about the key ingredient in mushrooms, psilocypic mushrooms. And when he's talking about five M e O d MT, that's something that's oftentimes associated with the toad from the Sonoran desert um. But also it can be produced synthetically, as can be mess s goal in, which is a key ingredient in peyote or in san pedro. So those are the substance we're talking about, but just to stick for a moment, simeon on this research f d A route. Um do you I mean if you had a bet like, are what are going to be the next substances or molecules for which types of mental health conditions? You have the molecule, the indication, and where they're at on the f d A path. So m d m A is tied right now to the indication of post traumatic stress disorder, and that's very close to being approved right it's in its second clinical trial phase three. You have psilocybin or the mushroom you'd reference compass in a phase two around the indication of treatment resistant depression. So something might not go through. There's a lot of drugs that you know, don't even get to a phase one that are pre clinical. There's drugs that get the phase two and then and then fail. Um. So that's not a d and indicative, but it's a good it's a good guess. It's a good barometer. So when m DAMA gets approved for treating PTSD, at that point it may have a more rapid progress in terms of being used to treat other medical conditions, whether it's an eating disorder or whether it's a range of other things, and ditto for psilocybin, which Compass is moving forward with now. Right, So you have those sorts of things, then you have, you know, the question about whether something like LSD, which I understand a lot of researchers don't do as much with in part because it's a much longer experience and therefore the time of the therapist, you know, is you know, that costs a lot more and because LSD still has a negative association in the public and the political mind. Um that mesclan is a possibility, that I begins a possibility. Um, But that in addition, there are these companies creating new molecules, right, I mean, creating variants on each of these drugs that they hope will have more upside and us downside. Yeah, you know, a lot of people are basing this on the you know, the odd few dozen you know, classical psychedelics, and it's very interesting. Some companies are viewing it through the perspective and we can make these better because it's the right thing to do. Other companies are viewing if we can make these not necessarily better, but different, so that we can you know, turn more patients through the door every day. UM, there's definitely a trend to you know, for me at least, who has been you know, a long time psycho Nott and have you know, played in a lot of UM, a lot of different intersections of this space. UM. I've always appreciated the catharsis of you know, an actual therapeutic trip. And there's a lot of narratives right now that are like the hallucination the trip confronting yourself is a side effect, and let's eliminate that altogether, presuming that we could have the same effect simply by um creating the same levels of neuro plasticity and brain chemistry that will quote unquote solve that indication. I mean, I guess most creating compounds where you don't get nauseous, or they last less time or things like that. Right certainly in the fungi world, I mean we've looked at I mean, mushrooms are and it's it's its own universe. They're so amazing in general, but you could find a strain of soelocity and depending on how you cultivate it, eliminate the nausea from the whole effect which has been there you know previously or commonly and the same thing obviously can be done at the synthetic level depending on what molecules you're looking at, So you know, to heach his own on the on the side effect or uh creating something new that's that's better or um faster or cheaper. And when you look at all the potential mental health conditions that are out there, what are some of the other ones? Yeah, the answer is limited by the human condition in but you know, the next top ten, Like we're looking at a lot of invested in companies focusing on traumatic brain injury as an example, UM, any range of eating disorders, of which there's you know, hundreds, and there's nuances in each of those hundreds that are different. UM. Obviously anything in in depression from treatment resistant to m d D too. You know, generalized anxiety disorder or social anxiety disorder, which you know, I look at those indications and they're very nuanced and very complex. But if I look at you know, a DSM manual like so many of those, at least in the UH generalized anything anxiety disorder, it is like, oh my god, that's was my last twenty four hours. Oh my god, wait, that's been my last ten years. It's so pervasive. So you know, it was a bit tongue in cheek. The the amount of indications are only limited by the human condition at least where we're at right now as a specie. But there's a lot out there well so, so some of the money has got to be made by patenting these new molecules, right And I've heard Compass, you know, which is now the biggest in the companies right now, um taking some real flak for being overly aggressive in trying to claim patents on things that they should not rightfully be trying to patent and own. And you know their responses, Hey, that's just the way people operating the patent world. But people in the side else world are saying, we're trying to do something different here, like cut that ship out. What's your take on that? Yeah, I think that. I think I'm more in the camp of cut that ship out, um. And there's definitely been responses from leadership of we're going to cut that ship out. Um. Time will tell how true that is. I also know, you know, from other industries, from tech, from education, like patents are the path. It's it's how the system works. And it gets really hard to like like what are we trying to do? Are we trying to heal people and create greater patient outcomes? And the answer I think is yes to all that. But then the bigger question comes as the system broken or is there a way to fix the underlying system? By the system, you mean patents or you mean the broader you know, nature of capitalism and capital markets, patents, the US health care system, capitalism in general. Right, it's like, we know it's not the best, and I'm not necessarily resolving to say, well, it's what we have, because we're always evolving, we're always iterating in civilization and certainly democracies or governments or laws and rules. But I've definitely heard and been disappointed that they didn't have a greater solution when somebody's like, there's a better way to do this, Like why would you invest in a company that's trying to pat molecules? And I'm like, well, if they're new molecules, it should be because that's a system and it drives innovation and it protects, you know, the people who are in some cases working years and years and years on something molecular that they think is unique. Um, how else will they be protected if not by a patent. I see. Okay, so we're getting in the weeds here is seeming at this point I just gotta drop back because I I hope our audience is fully engaged here. But you know, when you and I met, you know, you told me a little your past, and then I have listened to you speaking in other places, and so you know, I mean, just hear you. I mean my understand as you grew up in Chicago, but at the front end, when you're a little kid, you were following your Peace Corps volunteer parents around the world, and then your last years of high school, you know, you were in Ghana in West Africa, and then you spent a little time at the Maharishi University or whatever. But meanwhile, you know, tell me in the midst of all this, where you're you know, you also mentioned having read the classic book Robert Masters and Gene Houston's The Variety of Cyclic Experience. So so I mean, when, when when do you start doing the psychelics? Are you like a precocious thirteen year old doing it? Are you wait till you're in college? Or yeah? I was, I was really although I've I've never been accused of being precocious, but I guess that is the best word. God. It must have been like shortly after my bar mitzvah, and I didn't get this feeling of like now I'm a man, like this rite of passage, and I'm like, what else is there? And I remember ruffling through boxes in our basement in Roger's Park in Chicago. Um, and I found two books in my dad's collection. One was Ramdas is the only Dance there is and the other one was The Diatic Cyclone by John C. Lily. So I must have been, you know, um, thirteen and a half ish, and I read them and I was like, what the hell is this? You know, the Rabbi never told me any of this stuff. UM. And that kind of began the journey of just trying to read as much as possible. And then around fifteen six teen, I had the great fortune of meeting of meeting Robert Masters in gene Houston. They had become really dear friends with my best friend in the world. He passed away a while ago. And yeah, that was the beginning of Oh, there's actually psychedelic therapeutic protocols and you guys are playing with LSD in the Psyche. So yeah, my teen years it was um, you know, pretty full on. Um. Yeah, it's funny. I found Ah. I was up at my mom's in Michigan a few months ago and she said, uh, hey, sam My, you know there's there was some water damage in the basement, and go check out and see see what happened. And I came across the book uh and the journal from that time in history, So I was able to like flip through hundreds of pages of quote unquote experiments I was doing, um, you know, following uh, Bob and Jean's book and other books I had accumulated at that time, uh, with psychedelics. The other thing I found was a hard drive with a bunch of bitcoins that me and my older brother had and forgot about when we were buying bitcoins are under a buck to buy other things. It was a pleasant surprise. It was a very pleasant surprise. Did anyone experience really stand out here in these years that had some transformative impact or insight? Uh No, it's like they've all kind of conflated generally, in you know, the teen years, in the in the you know, the twenties, was a lot of ceremony. I spent a lot of time in the Amazon. I spent a lot of time and you know, wherever there was a forest culture or a culture that had medicine. Um. And then you know, personally just you know, tried everything. UM. So there's no one great experience or one one transformative experience. It's kind of like there were hundreds and they all had meaning in their own way. And I'm still working through it, um. And I'm still petrified each time I do a substance, even after all these years. But you know, also going back to your younger years, I mean, I know you were getting involved in tech, but as it's true of many people who maybe not about many, but at least some of the people involved in psychedelics and people involved in tech, many of them cut their teeth on entrepreneurship by doing things like selling weed or other drugs. Was that your story as well, seeing it? Yes, it was. Um. I was never you know, a drug dealer, but always helped facility. No, I guess I was. You know, I was selling like dying bags, and I always liked you know, cannabis, and I always liked you know, other molecules. It was never a full time thing. It was just like I had the ability to source and I had the ability to share, and sometimes I make some money on that. So yeah, I guess technically in those early early early years. Um. It's funny though, because um, a family member maybe a year ago, he's like, I read this thing in the the paper. Is this this ecstasy and and helping vets? And I go yeah, and he's like is that what you do? And I'm like, that's exactly what I'm doing. And he's like, ah, I always thought you were just a drug dealer. Um, so now you're legitimate. Yes, yes, indeed, uh huh. Well let me ask you also. I remember you said when we first smith this past summer, you said, you know Ethan. You and I met before, and I think it was at one of the early MAPS conferences in San Jose and I think ten and then I don't know you were you were you? Did you have some table you're selling something back then? And and was there something you told me about running like a psycholics arts gallery and Venice Beach? How far back do you go with this Psychelics thing? Yeah, I mean at least on that that junk or I had opened the world's first psychedelic art gallery and medical marijuana dispensary in two thousand and eight city. What were you doing with the psychedelic art gallery. Yeah, that was a I've always kind of liked new new things. So I had exited a company UM in Shanghai. I was living in Shanghai for seven years, and I was like, what's next. And I was kind of looking at California and my partners at the time we're like, hey man, there's this green rush and I'm like, well, I like, I like that's a new business, that's a new area, and I like cannabis and UM. I also really like art. Let's kind of conflate the two UM and Yeah. So we opened the world's first psychedelic art gallery medical marijuana dispensary. We hosted God, I think we created like a dozen shows. Uh, We're able to drive a lot of money to all the nonprofits and psychedelics. I mean people would come in and cry. Like they would walk into the the gallery and they'd see the art, and then they'd walk into the dispensary side before they got to the backyard the Garden of Weeden, and they'd be like, I never thought this would happen in my lifetime. Um, I mean, little did they know we kind of It was a sketchy time in cannabis back then. From the FED side. There were a lot of raids happening. There was a lot of uncertainty. Um, a fellow dispensary down the way I was rated, they killed his dogs. They shot his dogs. It was just like it was just one of those things. It's like, well, maybe the world isn't ready for this. It came to an end. Basically, I remember bringing everyone around a table, the staff, my partners, and asking from a show of hands, who wants to go to jail? And nobody raised their hand. So basically, uh, you know, shifted to delivery because at that time under prop to fifteen having a cannabis dispensary with sketchy but so many people over those years, you know, if they're not in jail, um are becoming public company CEOs, joining scientific advisory boards. There's just been a huge shift. So I really cherished those years then because it taught us so much and also, you know, we got to create this space that allowed people to talk openly about this just felt like a very different time. Yeah, I've been thinking a lot now about the lessons and similar and differences between the way that marijuana legalization and the commercialization has evolved and how it's happening in psychedelics as well. And you know, you pointed out before that you know, obviously to some extent, when you see these decrim initiatives and legislation passing in places you know, first Denver, the Oakland or recently Detroit of the statewide one in Oregon, he's becoming models for elsewhere. There's sort of following the model that we pioneered with first medical marijuana, marijuana legalization, and then when you see the growing role of money coming in all albeit in some different ways. And so I'm curious. I mean, first of all, is there a fair bit of overlap or people who have been invested in the marijuana space playing in every bigger role in the psychelic space or is it still fairly separate, And if so, why, I think there's definitely crossover um from you know, I refer to them as cannabros, and you know, there's crypto bros and other bros. It's kind of a generalized archetype. But because of the success on the money side of the cannabis playbook, i e. You first go public in Canada, then you presume your uplist to a senior exchange NASDAC, New York Stock Exchange, etcetera. Cannabro saw that and saw psychedelics and I said, oh, this is gonna be the same. Some were good actors, many were not. Many were You know what you hear is pump and dumps. I think those have for the most part all been eliminated because people are saying that this is more than just the blip of a one time opportunity, that this is going to be a vibrant, huge industry. So that's one side, and there's definitely that camp, and there's still activity there. On the other side, where it's completely different, is more of a biotech pharma kinda side to it. FDA trials being able to be reimbursed by insurance, you know, tons of research and can we create the drug or can we create the system that allows us to build a patient um So you're kind of seeing both and it's shifting from month to month. I'm curious also whether there is synergy or a competition between the growing legal and legally commercialized markets. On the one hand and the underground and illicit markets. You know, the first I think major medical merill Wanna company was out of the UK, GW pharmaceutical And then fast forward to about ten years ago and g W Pharmaceuticals trying to get a approval for its medical marijuana medicine, which is a very good thing to treat, you know, a type of epileptic condition in children. Um, but they hire a former deputy drugs are in the Bush administration to lobby against the broader legalization of medical marijuana through the political process, and it's just remarkably offensive. And I even see in the you know, in the current world, you see people who are involved in the legal medical or you know, adult use marijuana markets basically pushing to ban homegrow of marijuana by individuals or to push for tougher sanctions. I'm definitely starting to see some of the same contentions happen around companies that have psilocybin as a part of their you know, quote unquote portfolio of i P that they're developing and watching, you know, not just Oregon, but other states. You know, go wait a minute, um, will psilocybin legal at the state level before it gets through an f D A Phase three trial, and what does that do for us? So it'll be very interesting in the same way you witness that with g W and their hiring practices, how companies who have psilocybin and their portfolio, how they're going to play that. When you and I first met, were sitting on your patio and I don't know if you offered me a join or not. You know, but you New York City and many other places you have these marijuana delivery services, and you pull out the menu of what had been a marijuanna delivery service, but now it's got six different types of not just you know, marijuana chocolate bars, but you know, mushroom chocolate bars, psilocybin chocolate bars, to C B, M, D M A, all sorts of other concoctions that it just seems this extraordinarily booming um black market in these products, which with which fortunately law enforcement doesn't seem overly concerned and we're not hearing much in the way of people really getting hurt, although that's a risk. But what's your perception of what's going on with respect to the illicit market and all these products. Now, yeah, it's thriving. I mean not just similar to you know, cannabis is now you know, legal and the majority of the US, and the black markets even bigger. I think as it relates to, you know, just the delivery services in this city, and they're they're in every city, people started to say we should sell psychedelics too, and you know, I watched that because you know, I always keep a keen eye into the gray and black markets, right, because those are strong signals. It's in a lot of ways the zeitgeist, right. So yeah, a lot of these delivery services who were you know, doing pretty well selling cannabis illegally because you know, it wasn't legal in New York. UM said, well, if we're breaking the law anyway, and we can now sell micro dose mushroom caps at and margins and there's a demand for it, why wouldn't we. I think there was one I saw that in parentheses. It was for micro dose psilocybin type product and they were calling it Upper west Side zan X. I laughed, and it's like it was becoming so pervasive that, you know, the delivery service who was focusing on that area gave it the label and then I saw it and I was like, well, we were and I you know, I was like, how did you come up with that? I was like, well, we were thinking Upper West Side divorces, but then we learned they all take xan x and now they're taking micro dos psilocybin and they're off the xanax or other benzos, so we've just kept it Upper West Side zanex. So those are really really big signals. Well, you you mentioned Oregon before, right, I mean Oregon. You know, for our listeners may people who know that Oregon in past two ballot initiatives um each of them by about fifty six percent margins of victory. One was an old drug d krim one that basically embraced the Portugal model where you don't put people in jail for simple drug possession of anything. And that one was led by my organization, Drug Policy Alliance under my successors, together with locals and Oregon. The other one was the Oregon Psychelics Initiative, which you don't really shocked people on bypassing, and now there's a huge investment and making sure this gets implemented correctly. You know, the State of Oregon is set up a whole implementation board and agency. It's not just for medical therapeutic purposes in terms of curing you know, serious illness of PTSD. It's even for general wellness conditions. So you know, one can do it without having been diagnosed with any sort of significant mental illness. But I'm curious with respect to Oregon, what do you see? Are there going to be significant commercial opportunities in Oregon? Is it going to be clinics? How is it going to transform the world. Yeah, yeah, nobody knows exactly, but there's a lot of money coming into Oregon betting hedging that one will get a cultivation license, one will get you know, the equivalent of a dispensary license or a clinic license. One will get the you know, state level no bid contract to train the psychedelic assisted you know, therapists or trip sitters or facilitators. The labels are changing. But it's all happening like kind of in the next year, like those quote unquote rules will be established. And what's even more fathoming um is when I'm in meetings with other legislators or other state leaders or even other governments. It's funny. It's like this isn't verbatim, but like somebody said, Oregon, what we're a bigger state. When's the deadline. Let's beat him to the punch. And then as we got into it, they realized, no, it's not cannabis. Two point Oh, I'm guessing most of it as it rolls out. Um, in Oregon and other states and other other jurisdictions, will WILL WILL have a component of assistant therapy. Um. How exactly that looks, no one knows exactly. But um, it's a very open group, all the leadership, all the different subcommittees. I mean, you can jump on a zoom anytime and like watch it. You know, this living breathing revolution in the sense of granting psychedelics to you know, constituents or citizens of that state kind of happen overnight. Um. The other bullet point, or the last bullet point, which might kind of up end it all, is this prevalence of micro dosing and will a regulatory body, will the powers that be allow that to happen? And might that be kind of an opening of the floodgates where yeah, there's a little psychedelic in this, but it's safe and it's sub perceptual and as long as you you know, you don't take the whole bottle or the whole tab or you know, now you have this great technology that's able to dose you via a patch or an implant or something else. Might that jump ahead of everything else? Yeah, because I mean, if you think about it, right, I mean people talk about, you know, basically the pharmaceutical industry confirming a fundamental challenge because if in fact, these psychedelics and m d m A turn out to be as efficacious in dealing with all forms of mental illness as the promise suggests, it means that people who have been taking daily antidepressants, anti daily anti anxiety drugs, daily, this and that, for which you know, insurance companies are paying billions of dollars, and pharmacutic companies are making billions or tens of billions of dollars. Now people are going to be getting better sometimes by using a substance just once or five or ten or twenty times in a therapeutic context, which means that the amount of money that can be made from that these are not repeat drugs. Essentially, So the question becomes, I mean, first of all, are these new molecules are gonna be able to charge a fortune for these things? You know? B is the micro dose thing going to be the one that opens up where you know, these things become widely consumed products, and and that's where're gonna be the big money or is the truly big money gonna be about providing the clinics and the therapists and the standard certification and the support services and the retreats. Five ten years from now, you will see everything you mentioned have a roll um. If someone you know cures themselves or at least lessons, whatever their indication is, there could always be a continuation of whatever the molecule is, either sub or quarterly or annually. But you know, humanity likes to have, you know, a single experience that makes them feel good, but then you know, kind of support along the way. As far as clinics retreats, we're not doing any of those right now from the fund, not that we don't believe in them or think there's a great value there. But there will be an interesting you know, I'm already starting to see it in some ketamine roll ups where once these drugs, which is where it's all starting from our legal um, and they've gone through their trials and they're reimbursable, will there be the need for clinics outside of a hospital. UM. And that's where your last question about psychotherapy is a really important one, because the presumption right now is at least the way the laws are being written is including the psychedelic assistant therapy. So I think that component is still going to stay there, and that will afford the continual scaling of you know, these retreats and these clinics. UM. I don't know if I answer to your question or just created a hundred more questions. No, I mean you sort of did, and yes, and you did create a hundred more. But you know, in THEA, which like Maps, is trying to figure out as quickly as possible how to get the big insurance companies and public health insurance to cover psychedelic assisted therapy, I think in the way that some of the Kenemy treatment is now being covered, and so obviously that seems pivotal because that's the potential source of billions and billions of dollars coming in to pay for all sorts of you know, psychedelic related stuff. Do you have any insights about how likely and how fast it is to happen. It's definitely a matter of when, not if, UM, I mean it's already happening with ketamine right. You know, even when I had my dispensary, I figured out how to code things to reimburse some of my patients under prop to fifteen, almost complete reimbursability. So I do think it's a matter of when, not if, for that around psychedelics, because you know, at least in an THEA who you had named, who's an amazing organization, they're doing it very smart, very tactfully. And as these drugs come into market, you know they'll be the ones who have set up the right infrastructure and have played by the right rules and have really listened. You know that you even mentioning ketamine right here. You know. One of those speakers at the Horizons conference, so I thought he had a great talk was one of the leading ken amine therapist, Dr Gidabad, And part of her speech was this pointing out that some people think ketamine is just going to be a placeholder, that it's not the real psychedelic um once all these other types of psilocybin and m d M A center stuff submerged. And she says, no, that's not going to be the case. And so I'm curious, I mean, do you agree with her. Is kenemine just gonna keep growing, notwithstanding what happens on the n d M A and psilocybin and other fronts, And does it provide a model for the way these other things are going to evolve? On the latter question, it absolutely provides a model, because it's already happening, right, I mean right now if you go to academy clinic, not the majority, but several are the ones I've worked with are able to fully reimburse. And you know, personally, a few years ago, I got lime disease, and you know, basically it was in bed for a year, just totally knocked out. Then I experienced apathy. And apathy is the time like I would wake up and I would not care about anything. I was like, I remember waking up one day and going like, God, I wish I cared enough even to commit suicide. It was like nothing mattered, right, It's horrible, And it was coming up on a holiday. So I called the you know, the doctor who's also my GP that I helped set up some of the first ketamine clinics, and I'm like, you know, I'll be in town. You want to, you know, grab a pointer let's meet up. And he's like absolutely, and he's like, how's your how's your line? And I'm like, honestly, I got this this apathy thing. Um. He's like, all right, well, I'm booking you for a Monday, Wednesday, Friday session. Over the holidays offices are closed, but you know, I'm just gonna do you full I V And that next Saturday, the apathy was completely gone. I was blown away, having you know, explored ketamine for other things, and certainly having spent time, you know, in the club world, was pretty familiar with the effects of it. Um. I just had never did for an indication I had. It was magical and I don't know, like I didn't try m D m A, I didn't try psilocybin, I didn't try anything else. It was just a doctor who said, listen, I think this could work for you. And I'm like, all right, well, worst cases, I'll get to hang out in the ca hole for three days this Thanksgiving week. UM. So yeah, I don't think. I think every molecule has its place based on the indication and then based on you know, the other huge trend which I don't think we've talked about, which is you know, precision medicine, and just the fact that we're getting really close to being able to say, Okay, this is your thing based on this algorithm or this machine learning algorithm, this is the drug you need, and this is the therapy you need. So that's going to be pretty revolutionary in the next few years as well, which will basically ameliorate this whole is one better than the other, well, one might be better than the other based on who you are as a human and being your genetic profile, your how your brain talks to your gut, the whole set setting in matrix. But I don't think these others are going to replace ketamine or vice versa. But let me take you where you were going right there, which is looking the future. And you sad this earlier on. You know, it's not just going to be about psychedelics and mental health. It's gonna be about psychedelics and other types of health and looking at the component elements of the molecules within psychedelics. And so I'm curious, I mean, and when you're talking about these other things about greater specificity and targeting of disease, and what's the relationship between you know, this rapid evolution with psychedelics and uh, these broader areas of medical care, the non mental illness conditions. There's so much anecdotal information. There's a few companies working on it right now, um that are preclinical. Um, well that's not true. Not all are preclinical, but there's a lot that are pre clinical who are not focusing on the narrow of mental health. They're focusing on inflammation, they're focusing on brain degenerative disorders, they're focusing on um general health. And that's going to be a big narrative as we're able to test that these molecules also help with CNS disorders, UM, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's. It just doesn't have the same prominence as quote unquote mental health has because you know, again my argument that it's the human condition. Um, everybody is dealing with some some level, some severe, uh some barely even noticeable, but could be optimized mental health issue. So it's mid December, December fifte and I was just checking out some of these biggest companies and looking at their stock prices, and just this week some of the biggest ones, I think a tie which is like the eight pound guerilla of psycholic investment funds and Compass that we were talking about, and I think a few others, like the stock prices dive bonb this week. You know, what was that about? Is it just a blip? Are we gonna keep seeing these kind of things, or what's your take on it? I think today was a combination of you know, today was a significant day. Like you had mentioned a tie. You know, it was very interesting that the first you know, press release was about founders signing a voluntary uh memo saying they would stay in lock up another twenty four months. Just explain stay in lock up to our audience. Yeah, lock up is you know, in so many of these companies, the ones you're seeing in public markets, they were in most cases almost unanimously private companies. And when you invest in a private company, um, because you're early, you're locked up. Like even if the company goes public, you can't sell your shares um And that has a lot to do with compliance and SEC and other regulatory bodies. And that's almost always true of the founders, right or anyone who's director, you're they cannot sell their shares until a certain lock up period expires. And this isn't just psychedelics, This is any industry. But you know, there's a lot of retail investors, there's a lot of institutional investors who are like, well, does the management believe in this company? And I think that was the ovation that came out of a tie this morning that they do and they're going to hold for another two years and not sell a single share. In theory, I mean, there's you could definitely deconstruct the memo and see that there's ways to get out of that, but um, that was the narrative they lead with. Now why it dipped in value, I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that a lot of lock ups expired today and a lot of people wanted to take their gains or not take more losses. And that happens in every industry and anything that's public from time to time. So I do think this is a blip. It's also hard to argue that it's something other than that, because how much data do we have if we call it, you know, psychedelic public markets, we have what a couple of years of it. You're gonna look to see n s, You're gonna look at biotech to try and to correlate it, but it's still too early to really qualify if this is like the future, just because today was a sell off day for for some on the flip side. I can show you, you know, uh, four seventeen other stocks that all rose by ten to in psychedelics did I don't do. I don't really have the bandwidth to day trade I wish. UM. I mean, we definitely watch it for sentiment, but we're focused on private companies. We're usually like seed to a so often you know, well before there's a liquidity event, which is often okay, hey it's liquid, there's money, it's it's now it's public and it's on the nastact that kind of narrative. Um. But we don't focus on on public companies in the fund and way too busy just talking to founders and going through decks and helping strategize to uh to be a day trader. But if I did, today would have been the day to do. You know. I I was listening to uh, your colleague Lindsay Hoover being asked, you know, how do you figure out what to invest in? And she said, well, you know, it's kind of like you know, with real estate, it's location, location, location, and when you're investing in startups, it's the team, the team, the team. Is there more to say beyond that about when you're trying to make your choices and who you're gonna put money on. Uh No, Lindsay really summed it up clearly, obviously more nuanced, but you know, you bet on the jockey and not the horse, and there's you know, a million business metaphors to it. But yeah, we always start with the team. Sometimes we'll see some amazing I p or an amazing novel novelty and go to market strategy that doesn't have the team yet. Um, so we'll do some matchmaking, but we always like to start with the people and the humans who you know, we're entrusting, you know, our limited partners money to make them a return and or we're entrusting them to do the right thing. And that's that's never going to be an algorithm quite yet. Um maybe in a year we'll dow it all out, but uh yeah, team is you know, it's the people. That's still the world we live in. So we always start with the team. Yeah, you know, I seeming I saw you Cuote. I don't know if you're quoting somebody else or making this up to yourself when you say something like we're in the business of medicalizing the mystical um, and I guess that's as we make clear, that's not all of it. Well, listen to Seeming. I'm grateful to Leonard Picard's for introducing us, and it's a pleasure getting to know you. I look forward to many more and also the great success of your Jails fund. So thank you ever so much for joining me and our Psychoactive listeners today. It's my absolute pleasure. Ethan, thank you as well. Have a great rest of your night. Join me next week when I speak with Cirston Smith, a research or at the National Institute on Drug Abuse who's been studying creatum, the fascinating drug out of Southeast Asia which millions of Americans are now using to deal with drug dependencies, pain, or simply to improve their mood. You know, if I didn't think creatum was going to be relevant, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you. I mean relevant on many different levels, both creating products, proliferating in real world studying therapeutics such that there's like a medicinal creatum situation going on. Similar to cannabis again. You know it's not even my gut. If I thought it was not helping people, I would be working on something else. Subscribe to Psychoactive now, see it, don't miss it. If you'd like to share your own stories, comments or ideas, please leave us a message at eight three three seven seven nine sixty. That's one eight three three psycho zero. You can also email us at Psychoactive of at protozoa dot com, or find me on Twitter at Ethan Nadelman. And if you couldn't keep track of all this, find the information in the show notes. Psychoactive is a production of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's hosted by me Ethan Nadelman. It's produced by Katcha Kumkova and Ben Kibrick. The executive producers are Dylan Golden, Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus and Darren Aronovski for Protozoa Pictures, Alex Williams and Matt Frederick for I Heart Radio and me Ethan Naedelman. Our music is by Ari Belusian and a special thanks to a vi Vit Brio, Seph Bianca Grimshaw and Robert Beatty,