A trial that could lead to the use of magic mushroom treatments for depression has been stalled because of "absurd" regulations restricting the use of illegal drugs in research, it has been claimed.
Study leader Professor David Nutt, who was controversially sacked from his role as the Government's chief drug adviser in 2009, says "archaic" rules obstructing scientific progress should be abolished.
His team at Imperial College London has uncovered evidence that the hallucinogen psilocybin may combat severe depression which resists conventional treatment.
The problem is that psilocybin is the psychoactive ingredient in so-called "magic mushrooms" and is banned as a Class A drug.
Although the Medical Research Council has awarded a £550,000 grant for the trial, Professor Nutt said it has not yet been able to proceed.
Speaking ahead of the British Neuroscience Association's Festival of Neuroscience in London, he said: "We're not allowed to go and pick the mushrooms anymore and finding a company to provide this illegal drug in a way that can be prepared for trial use as yet has proved impossible.
Professor Nutt was the Government's chief drug adviser "We are between a rock and a hard place, and that's very unfortunate because if this is an effective treatment, as it may well be for some people, then they are obviously being denied that possibility."
Under the law, academic researchers are not allowed to manufacture their own Class A drugs and must obtain them from external sources.
Companies that could supply the drugs have to go through "regulatory hoops" to obtain the necessary Home Office licence, Professor Nutt said.
This can take up to a year and triple the cost, he maintained.
Other major hurdles were the EU guidelines on Good Manufacturing Practice, which sets daunting standards for potential suppliers, and rules on storage.
Only four hospitals in the UK currently have a licence to hold psilocybin, making it difficult to roll the drug out as a prospective treatment.
Professor Nutt added: "We are the first people ever to have done a psilocybin study in the UK, but we are still hunting for a company that can manufacture the drug to GMP standards for the clinical trial, even though we've been trying for a year to find one.
"We live in a world of insanity in terms of regulating drugs at present. The whole field is so bogged down by these intransigent regulations, so that even if you have a good idea, you may never get it into the clinic."
Researchers discovered that when healthy volunteers are injected with the drug it shuts down a region of the brain known to be over-active in depression.
Professor Nutt was asked to step down from his role as chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs in 2009 after claiming that alcohol and tobacco were more harmful than LSD, ecstasy and cannabis.
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