Psychedelics have long been sanctioned as dangerous substances. Today, psychedelics are enjoying a new found appeal, even being idealized as wonder drugs. As part of the so-called psychedelic renaissance, reports abound about the benefits of these substances for remedying individual mental health issues and bringing about social change.

Offering a critical view of these developments, Psychedelic Capitalism locates this renaissance in the context of corporate capture, medicalization, and the war on drugs. Wealthy entrepreneurs are investing billions in the psychedelics industry. Biotechnology firms are racing to capture intellectual property and monopolize psychedelic supply chains. Venture capitalists are leveraging the prospects of a lucrative mass market. Together, these actors are appropriating Indigenous knowledge and claiming ownership over substances that have been in the public domain for centuries.

Brownlee and Walby ask if corporations and the medical establishment are suited to steward the mainstreaming of psychedelics, raising concerns with how the psychedelic renaissance is entrenching systems of inequality, limiting access and affordability, and increasing the reach of drug war surveillance and criminalization. Interrogating the consequences of psychedelic capitalism, the authors point to what could be gained from a just and equitable psychedelic future rooted in the public interest.

Jamie Brownlee is the author of Academia, Inc.: How Corporatization is Transforming Canadian Universities (2015, Fernwood) and Ruling Canada: Corporate Cohesion and Democracy (2005, Fernwood). He holds a PhD in Sociology and Political Economy from Carleton University. Using information collected through Access to Information requests, his doctoral research examined the influence of corporate power in the sphere of higher education.

Kevin Walby is Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Winnipeg. He is the author of Touching Encounters: Sex, Work, and Male-for-Male Internet Escorting (2012, University of Chicago Press), the co-author of Municipal Corporate Security in International Context (2015, Routledge), and the co-editor of Brokering Access: Power, Politics, and Freedom of Information Process in Canada (2012, UBC Press) and Policing Cities: Urban Securitization and Regulation (2013, Routledge). He is also the Prisoners' Struggles editor for the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons.

Jamie Brownlee's profile page

Kevin Walby is Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Winnipeg. He has authored or co-authored articles in British Journal of Criminology, Qualitative Inquiry, Qualitative Research, Punishment & Society, Antipode, Policing and Society, Urban Studies, Surveillance and Society, Media, Culture, and Society, Sociology, Current Sociology, International Sociology, Social Movement Studies, and more. He is author of Touching Encounters: Sex, Work, and Male-for-Male Internet Escorting (2012, University of Chicago Press). He is co-editor of Brokering Access: Power, Politics, and Freedom of Information Process in Canada with M. Larsen (2012, UBC Press). He is co-author with R. Lippert of Municipal Corporate Security in International Context (2015, Routledge). He has co-edited with R. Lippert Policing Cities: Urban Securitization and Regulation in the 21st Century (2013, Routledge) and Corporate Security in the 21st Century: Theory and Practice in International Perspective (2014, Palgrave). He is co-editor of Access to Information and Social Justice with J. Brownlee (2015, ARP Books) and The Handbook of Prison Tourism with J. Wilson, S. Hodgkinson, and J. Piche (2017, Palgrave). He is co-editor of Corporatizing Canada: Making Business Out of Public Service with Jamie Brownlee and Chris Hurl (2018, Between the Lines Press). He is co-editor of the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons.

Kevin Walby's profile page

“Psychedelic Capitalism offers a timely and incisive analysis of the rapidly evolving psychedelic terrain. Brownlee and Walby expose where the corporate capture trip is headed through hasty medicalization, commercialization, psychedelic tourism, Big Tech, Big Pharma, and intellectual property practices. The book wakes our senses to how powerful interests are reshaping the meaning of psychedelics, largely to the detriment of Indigenous practices, recreational uses, and communities excluded from the benefits of the new psychedelic frontier. “

Shelley Marshall, adjunct professor, College of Nursing, University of Manitoba and harm reduction programme organizer

“Psychedelic Capitalism provides an incisively critical analysis of many of the key themes that arise from the renewed interest and legitimacy of psychedelic drugs and substances. In clear and concise prose, Brownlee and Walby weave a cogent and compelling story based on many disparate critical voices and perspectives calling for a closer examination of the often-unbridled enthusiasm for the current psychedelic renaissance. They call for people in—or entering—the expanding field of psychedelic science and therapeutics to critically consider the socio-political and economic foundations of what’s driving the popularization of this (re)emergent area of research and practice. The authors have done an excellent job in taking on this task through a penetrating and dispassionate narrative. “

Kenneth Tupper, adjunct professor, School of Child and Youth Care, University of Victoria