Inside UC Berkeley's Nation-Representative Psychedelics Survey: Unveiling Unexpected Data

The following is Part I of our coverage. For Part II, click here.

During MAPS' Psychedelic Science 2023 conference, the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics (BCSP) presented findings from a recently conducted 1,500-person national poll.

The difference between this and other surveys, authors explain, is that it is a registered voter poll — “randomly selected and demographically weighted so that it's representative of the overall population."

Full data analysis is expected on July 12.

The authors addressed hot-button topics like creating a regulated framework for psychedelics’ therapeutic use, removing criminal penalties for personal use, and easing research restrictions.

BCSP’s executive director Imran Khan and the center’s psychedelics survey project lead, Taylor West, spoke with Benzinga to learn more about what the results might mean for the present and future psychedelics landscape:

Almost Half The U.S. Population Associate Psychedelics With Mental Health Treatments

UC’s BCSP Khan says the team is interested in the relationship between psychedelics’ technical research and society as a whole.

The survey, he explains, builds on what they see as an existing gap in what the general public "truly thinks" of psychedelics, with a rigorous methodology that allows for a “good representation" -2.5% margin of error on total 1,500 participants.

Demographic Data: The authors plan to split the data up by category (gender, age, education level, having kids or not, plus geographic and state distribution). So far, here's what we know:

• 47% of the U.S. population have seen, read or heard about psychedelics recently

• 16% heard “a great deal” and 31% heard “a little” (mostly regarding their use as mental health treatments). “This means the conversation about psychedelics is cutting through to a significant portion of the population, and the message is that they’re big news for mental health treatments,” says Khan.

• 61% of people nationally said they would support creating a regulated legal therapeutic framework such as those in Colorado and Oregon. That's "much higher" than West anticipated.

• 56% national support for FDA approval, or a medicalization route. 

“This is my speculation, but I think probably the reason that this is lower [than the prior number] has less to do with psychedelics and more to do with the FDA not being a particularly trusted source these days. So I think that likely is depressing the support,” West said.

“There's been some active work on that since at least the late 60s, and in 1969 public opinion agency Gallup started tracking the question of ‘Do you support marijuana legalization?’" West recalls. “Yet it wasn't until 2016 that we saw it reach 60%. It was a long period of work and it kind of went along, spiked up after but still, that was 50 years of work before it got to 60%.”

It's noticeable just how quickly people seem to have responded to the idea that this is a policy change that might be worthwhile, she says.

Photo: Benzinga edit; photo by Vector Tradition, Kateryna Kon and SvetaZi on Shutterstock logos on Wikipedia.