Decision to make the previously illicit drugs available is dogged by suggestions that it was rushed.

In a controversial move, Australia will become the world’s first country to allow the drugs psilocybin and MDMA to be prescribed by doctors to treat psychiatric conditions including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

MDMA is widely known as the party drug ecstasy, and psilocybin is the active ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms.

Nations including the United States, Canada and Israel allow individual use of these drugs on compassionate grounds or in clinical trials, but on 1 July Australia will be the first to regulate the drugs as medications, to be prescribed by approved psychiatrists.

Psychiatrists will prescribe the drugs using the TGA’s Authorised Prescriber Scheme, which allows registered psychiatrists to prescribe medicines that have yet to be formally included on Australia’s register of therapeutic goods.

The TGA says that doctors who prescribe MDMA and psilocybin must follow a code of conduct published by the Medical Board of Australia.

SMMRY