“Research shows promising findings for the treatment of PTSD, intergenerational trauma, depression, and more. However, the vast majority of academic studies have not included communities of color as researchers or participants.”

“Ifetayo Harvey, Founder at People of Color Psychedelic Collective, says she’s not comfortable in psychedelic spaces if people are not talking about racism in relation to the war on drugs. People often refuse to talk about the issue, even when it’s sitting right in front of them. Racism in psychedelics needs to be talked about to make the psychedelic movement inclusive.”

“After my first “Journey,” I read everything I could about psychedelics and everything was written by white man like Michael Pollan and Dennis and Terrence McKenna. So I scoured the web for people of color and their research and experience with entheogen. Fortunately for me, I found Ifetayo Harvey , founder Of People of Color in Psychedelics.”

“I’ve been able to look at myself with more compassion, look at my family with more compassion,” she said. “When you’re in a sober state of mind, it’s harder to process heavy things sometimes because we want to run away from it or we want to bury our feelings. And with mushrooms, you can’t really do that. Mushrooms kind of make you face whatever you’re running away from.”

Writer and cultural activist Ifetayo Harvey works in communications at the Drug Policy Alliance. She has spoken widely on her experience growing up with a parent in prison, and she is a passionate advocate for ending the war on drugs and mass incarceration, improving education, sexual health and reproductive justice. In this conversation she gives us a brief history of the drug war before diving into the opportunity presented by our current moment: whether we use the tide of legalization to deconstruct the prison industrial complex and begin to make amends for centuries of oppressive, racists lawmaking. She talks about the traumatic fallout of mass incarceration, harm reduction and public fear around normalizing drug use, accessibility to medicine, using psychedelics to shift consciousness en masse, and protecting psychedelic spaces from predatory individuals and institutions. You can find her writing at www.ifetayo.strikingly.com and a wealth of resources from the DPA at www.drugpolicy.org. More podcasts at www.maurajames.com.

““It’s great that the FDA is finally recognizing that the substances our government has criminalized and stigmatized for decades have therapeutic value,” said Ifetayo Harvey, a Marketing Coordinator for the Drug Policy Alliance. “However, I’m afraid that the route of medicalization and FDA recognition will only lead to corporatization of mushrooms and preclude accessibility for everyone.”

“What I also see coming from this trial,” she continued, “is a more synthesized version of psilocybin detached from its cultural significance connected to the practices of the Native American people of Mexico and Central America. I think it’s important that we acknowledge this medicine is attached to people’s cultural practices.”

“Most conferences in the United States covering psychedelics lack voices from the black and indigenous communities and our project seeks to bridge that gap. The vast majority of the programming around psychedelics in the larger drug policy reform movement is dominated by those with immense privilege,” Ifetayo explains. “Our mission is to create a series of gatherings in multiple cities to highlight the voices of Black, indigenous, and other people of color, along with other marginalized groups. These gatherings will build the political willpower that psychedelic enthusiasts need to make policy changes like legalization and decriminalization.”

“As a black person who has taken many psychedelic trips over the past three years, I’ve experienced the truths that these substances have brought me. I’ve seen my ancestors and heard mother Earth speak to me, and felt a happiness like no other. I want all black people who are interested in psychedelics to have the opportunity to experience this in a safe environment. Yet safety is a myth for black people in this world. Despite that, black people look oppression in the eyes and say “fuck it, I am going to heal.” Any black person who attempts to heal from the harms of white supremacy is committing an act of resistance because we live in a world that tells black people our lives don’t matter.”