Whose HOPE? Power, knowledge, and the decolonization of psychedelic ethics

Abstract

Abstract The global expansion of psychedelic research, clinical translation, and policy reform has intensified debates concerning safety, equity, cultural appropriation, and Indigenous rights. A prominent contribution to these discussions is the Hopkins–Oxford Psychedelic Ethics (HOPE) Consensus Statement (Jacobs et al., 2024), which proposes a foundational ethical framework for a field undergoing rapid institutionalization. HOPE advances important commitments, including the recognition of Indigenous Peoples with historical relationships to sacred medicines, opposition to criminalization, and support for equity, education, and benefit-sharing. This article examines whether such ethical commitments are supported by governance mechanisms capable of addressing the political-economic dynamics shaping the contemporary psychedelic field. Drawing on Latin American Critical Bioethics (Lorenzo, 2012; Cunha & Lorenzo, 2014; Cunha, 2023), we analyze HOPE as an influential ethical artifact situated within a broader transnational governance landscape marked by pharmaceuticalization, intellectual property enclosure, prestige-based knowledge production, linguistic coloniality, and the biomedical monopolization of legitimacy. To characterize this landscape, we employ the notion of a nebuleuse : a diffuse network of actors, institutions, and forms of influence through which ethical norms circulate more readily than authority, recognition, rights, or benefits are redistributed. We examine four fault lines in contemporary psychedelic governance: representativeness, patentability and associated traditional knowledge, accessibility, and epistemic justice. Across these domains, we show how ethical concern is frequently articulated without corresponding mechanisms capable of shifting decision-making power or material outcomes. We argue that, in the absence of robust institutional arrangements, ethical frameworks risk functioning primarily as instruments of legitimation rather than vehicles for redistribution, accountability, and repair. To address these limitations, we propose a set of counter- nebuleuse measures, including enforceable intercultural governance bodies, Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), biocultural protocols, traceability and disclosure requirements for patents and commercialization, language justice commitments, and rights-based benefit-sharing frameworks grounded in Indigenous' Peoples self-determination.