Research Symposium

BIO

I'm originally from Oregon City, Oregon; I'm here taking a break from the rain. I am interested in anything to do with law, especially how laws have been shaped and developed in historical context. I'll be graduating in May 2027 with a dual degree, and will attend law school to hopefully become a criminal prosecutor.

Psychedelic Policy: An Overview of Drug Law in China and Japan

Abstract

Psychedelic drugs have been a recent source of contention in western countries; they are seen both as dangerous and as therapeutically significant. While there is an extensive body of documentation about how psychedelics are regulated in the US and Europe, there has been less research on the legal situation of psychedelics elsewhere. The research’s objective was to discover when China and Japan prohibited psychedelics, how they are regulating them in the modern day, and whether the laws allow for any research into therapeutic use. Using online legal and academic databases, the projected cross-referenced human-translated laws with Google Translate’s version of the original texts and analyzed the portions that were relevant to psychedelic drug use and research. By supplementing legal analysis with a selection of relevant academic papers written in China and Japan, the research discovered that Japan’s current law was written in 1953 (with major changes in 2002), and psychedelics were prohibited as early as 1948. China’s current law was written in 2008 and has since been clarified by a number of bureaucratic regulations. China has a longstanding history of hallucinogenic plant use in traditional medicine, while Japan does not. The project noted that Chinese laws do not allow for research, with the exception of ketamine for PPD, while Japanese laws allowed for extremely limited, non-therapeutic research. Ultimately, the research suggests that China and Japan have extremely strict regulations on psychedelics, which limits any potential research on therapeutic use.

Keywords: policy, psychedelic, drug, china, japan