The growing Western interest in the psychoactive brew ayahuasca and participation in exotic rituals has led to a proliferation of 'shamanic centers' in the Peruvian Amazon over recent decades. Among these, the Takiwasi center is a therapeutic community that annually hosts hundreds of domestic and foreign clients. Founded by a French physician in 1992, it originally offered an alternative treatment for addiction, blending tools from Peruvian mestizo shamanism with biomedicine and clinical psychology. The institution's diachronic evolution, however, is marked by an increasing incorporation of elements from the Catholic tradition.
Prohibitionist drug policies present their political-moral agenda as ideologically neutral science. This article examines cannabis and psychedelics to show that prohibitionism selectively uses only scientific findings that support its predetermined conclusions while ignoring contradictory evidence. The authors argue that drug policies should instead be grounded in scientific evidence and core values—public health, social cohesion, and human rights. They advocate analyzing the power relations that shape the contradictory relationship between science and drug policy.
Prohibition of psychedelic substances is sustained more by political and economic interests than by scientific justifications, leading to stigmatization and vulnerability. Drawing on critical bioethics, the essay examines the historical context and varied terminology for psychedelics, problematizing the definition of drugs by highlighting the lack of objective criteria distinguishing legal from illicit substances. It advocates ending prohibition based on ethical arguments, emphasizing the importance of psychedelics in reducing individual and collective suffering, given their therapeutic potential and millennia-long history of cultural and spiritual use.