So-called magic mushrooms might be able to help treat severe depression, a controversial British expert has claimed.
Yesterday Professor David Nutt hit at British and European rules which are preventing the testing of substances found in the mushrooms in clinical trials.
The Medical Research Council has already agreed a grant for the trial, which will test the chemical psilocybin.
But it has fallen foul of regulations on the licensing of illegal drugs, Professor Nutt told the conference of the British Neuroscience Association, where he is president.
Early tests on healthy volunteers have shown the drug can inactivate part of the brain that becomes over-active in depression.
Professor Nutt, of Imperial College London, UK, said: "We live in a world of insanity in terms of regulating drugs at present. The whole field is so bogged down by these intransient regulations, so that even if you have a good idea, you may never get it into the clinic.
“The law for the control of drugs like psilocybin as a Schedule 1 Class A drug makes it almost impossible to use them for research and the reason we haven’t started the study is because finding companies who could manufacture the drug and who are prepared to go through the regulatory hoops to get the licence, which can take up to a year and triple the price, is proving very difficult.
"The whole situation is bedevilled by this primitive, old-fashioned attitude that Schedule 1 drugs could never have therapeutic potential, and so they have to be made impossible to access."
He said the drug might also help to boost levels of serotonin, a key brain chemical.
He said: "We found that, even in normal people, the more that part of the brain was switched off under the influence of the drug, the better they felt two weeks later.
“This is the basis on which we want to run the trial, because this is what you want to do in depression: you want to switch off that over-active part of the brain."
He added: "What we are trying to do is to tap into the reservoir of under-researched ‘illegal’ drugs to see if we can find new and beneficial uses for them in people whose lives are often severely affected by illnesses such as depression.
"The current legislation is stopping the benefits of these drugs being explored and for the last 40 years we have missed really interesting opportunities to help patients."
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