Peter Aziz was jailed for providing consenting adults with a physiologically harmless substance which they took under close supervision for healing purposes ('Healer' jailed for providing drug potion, 3 September). I am an NHS doctor campaigning to see a re-emergence of psychedelic therapy in the UK. Drugs such as LSD, psilocybin (magic mushrooms), MDMA (ecstasy) and DMT (ayahuasca, as prescribed by Peter Aziz) can all be used safely with adequate preparation and under clinical conditions to improve people's lives and treat unremitting mental disorders. There is a growing wealth of scientific evidence and increasing medical support for this form of therapy. How sad therefore that another innocent bystander has been caught in the crossfire of the war on drugs.
Dr Ben Sessa
Consultant psychiatrist and psychedelic therapy researcher
• In August you reported that "an ayahuasca detox deep in the English countryside left Stephanie Theobald pain-free and mentally rebooted" (Shamanism in Sussex, Travel, 13 August); in September that a "British 'shaman' caught administering a potion containing a class-A hallucinogenic to 17 followers at a candlelit 'healing' ceremony" has been jailed for 15 months. It is a shame that just as the western world is opening its eyes to the therapeutic potential of ayahuasca and other so-called "hallucinogenics", the courts, and the Guardian, resort to the same worn-out "drugs" discourse.
Dr Andy Letcher
Oxford
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