Rocky Mountain Poison & Drug Safety (RMPDS) announced on March 17 that it has received a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to continue its research into psychedelic use through the National Survey Investigating Hallucinogenic Trends (NSIHT).
The award comes as psychedelic use increases across the United States, both for therapeutic and recreational purposes. As more states consider new policies regarding these substances, public health systems are seeking reliable data to inform their decisions.
The NSIHT collects detailed information about more than 17 different psychedelics, including reasons for use, dosage patterns such as microdosing, settings of use, supervision, and whether substances were obtained legally or illicitly. This data is paired with validated measures of health outcomes, emergency department visits, and mental health indicators. The project will also compare outcomes in states with varying psychedelic policies to better understand how legalization and decriminalization affect safety and public health.
Andrew A. Monte, MD, PhD, Associate Director of RMPDS, said: “States, health systems and drug developers are being asked to make major decisions without rigorously collected reliable data. NSIHT will finally give policymakers, clinicians and industry the trustworthy real-world data they need to understand risks, identify safeguards and prepare for the rapid expansion of psychedelic access and provide information to guide safe and effective use.”
Over the next five years, the NIH R01 award will help generate national and state-level estimates of health outcomes among those who do or do not use psychedelics. It aims to identify where risks concentrate under different policy environments and develop a predictive framework so states can anticipate healthcare demand before policy changes take effect.
Yael Schenker, Chief Academic Officer at Denver Health said: “Receiving an NIH R01 grant is so much more than funding. It’s a vote of confidence from the broader scientific community that a project will have a high impact and the approach to the work is rigorous.”
RMPDS has invited collaboration with state health departments, drug safety monitoring experts, medical affairs professionals, and policy organizations interested in integrating NSIHT data into their policy assessment frameworks.
