Selected writing about psychedelics, drug and tobacco policy, and philanthropy from Lucid News, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Mother Jones and the Stanford Social Innovation Review. You can find more of my journalism at Medium.
Psychedelics
The collapse of Field Trip Health. Lucid News, June 2023. What went wrong at Field Trip Health, a high-profile, upscale chain of ketamine clinics? Plenty.
Shifting strategy, MAPS turns to equity investment. Lucid News, March 2023. I broke the news that the non-profit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) for the first time was trying to sell shares in its for-profit, drug-development subsidiary, MAPS Public Benefit Corporation (MAPS PBC). MAPS has struggled to raise the money from philanthropic sources that it needs to bring MDMA to market as a prescription medicine.
Group therapy shows promise for psychedelic-based treatment, Lucid News, March 2023. A story about Sunstone Therapies, a startup based at a cancer center in Rockville, MD., that is treating cancer patients and their family members with psilocybin-assisted therapies. Working with groups, the people at Sunstone say, could be both more effective and efficient than one-on-one treatments,
Gilgamesh tweaks known psychedelics to improve therapies. Lucid News, January 2023. A startup company aims to use cutting-edge technology to modify classic psychedelics to make them safer, more effective or easier to administer. Investors are impressed.
Roland Griffiths, and his legacy. Medium. January 2023. The pioneering Johns Hopkins researcher was diagnosed with terminal cancer. What happened next was remarkable.
Awakn navigates the tough market for investment capital. Lucid News. December 2022. A startup company called Awakn is developing ketamine-assisted therapy for alcohol use disorder. It has attracted world-renowned scientists, and ran a clinical trial delivered impressive results. But its financial status is precarious.
Carey Turnbull wears many hats. Lucid News. October 2022. He is a CEO, a philanthropist, an investor and an advocate. He’s got a strong will and considerable influence over the psychedelics sector. Will he use his power wisely?
Eleusis Holdings plans to be acquired by Beckley Psytech. Lucid News. October 2022. A venture capital-backed startup company that funded pioneering research into the anti-inflammatory properties of psychedelics ran short of money and agreed to a merger.
As plant medicine churches grow, legal questions linger. Lucid News. August 2022. Psychedelics have been used in religious settings for thousands of years. Is their use in a church setting protected by the First Amendment or the Religious Freedom Restoration Act? It’s unclear.
A young philanthropist blazes a path towards a psychedelic future. Lucid News. August 2022. Cody Swift has funded some of this century’s most consequential research into psychedelics. He has guided patients at Johns Hopkins, and tried the medicines himself.
Journey Colab looks to mescaline to treat alcohol use disorder. Lucid News. May 2022. Mescaline is the oldest known psychedelic, and a favorite drug of the writer Aldous Huxley, the poet Allen Ginsberg and the legendary chemist Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin. A California-based startup wants to use it to treat alcoholism.
At Johns Hopkins, funders shape the future of psychedelic research. Lucid News. April 2022. The scientific agenda at the US’s leading academic center for research into psychedelics is set largely by donors.
The Psychedelic Revolution in Mental Health Stanford Social Innovation Review. Spring 2021. Rick Doblin launched the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies in 1986 to research and advocate for the use of LSD, psilocybin and MDMA to treat mental illness. After more than three decades of labor, he has found his moment. A deeply-reported look at MAPS and its impact.
No, Richard Nixon did not call Timothy Leary the most dangerous man in America. Medium. December 2020. At least there’s no evidence that he did. Self-explanatory.
Can Psychedelics Heal the World? Medium. January 2020. A man can dream.
A psychedelic renaissance. The Chronicle of Philanthropy. April 2019. For decades, neither governments nor companies would fund research into psychedelics. Philanthropy stepped up. My first story (paywalled) about psychedelics. It led to my late-in-life course correction.
Tobacco and drug policy
Can we learn to love Big Tobacco? Medium, April 2023. The tobacco industry has a sordid history. It continues to sell cigarettes, by the billions. But its effort to sell less harmful nicotine products should be encouraged, not blocked at every turn. Philip Morris International, in particular, is helping smokers quit by selling e-cigarettes and other safer nicotine products.
Can people who care about smoking and vaping agree on anything? Filter. November 2022. The e-cigarette question has deeply divided those who favor harm reduction and those who would like to prohibit all things tobacco. Finding common ground has been hard.
The Half-Truth Initiative. How an anti-smoking group lost its way. Filter. July 2022. The anti-smoking group, Truth Initiative, has become an implacable opponent of vaping, exaggerating the dangers of e-cigarettes and downplaying evidence that vaping has displaced smoking among both teens and adults. Its critics—and former leaders—are appalled.
The unchecked power of philanthropy. Medium. June 2022. Bloomberg Philanthropies’ crusade against vaping is doing more harm than good. This is an edited version of a talk that I gave via Zoom to the Global Nicotine Forum. It’s my most-read story ever on Medium, by far.
Man with no criminal history gets five-year sentence for selling weed. Reason. March 2022. A 40-year-old Pittsburgh man named Daniel Muessig faces five years in federal prison for selling cannabis. A former lawyer, he has no criminal record. My first article for Reason.
Here Comes Trouble: An Anti-Tobacco Hero’s Complicated Legacy. Undark. August 2021. A deeply-reported story about Stanton Glantz, a lauded tobacco scientist whose crusade against vaping has turned former allies against him. This was commissioned by Undark, a science website, and republished by Mother Jones and Salon.
Bloomberg’s Millions Funded an Effective Campaign Against Vaping. Could It Do More Harm Than Good? The Chronicle of Philanthropy. March 2021. An deep look into the way anti-tobacco nonprofits, led by the Campaign For Tobacco-Free Kids, have crusaded against the use of e-cigarettes by teenagers–an effort that could keep a tool for quitting out of the hands of millions of today’s smokers.
Philanthropy
Philanthropy, capitalism and racial justice. Medium, June 2023. Vast sums of money are flowing from rich foundations to grass-roots groups to accomplish vaguely-defined goals, with little accountability. The lack of knowledge about what works and what does not should matter more than it does.
Foundations join together to learn about—and fund—racial justice. The Chronicle of Philanthropy, June 2023. A story about so-called pooled funds created by big foundations, focused on racial justice and designed to get money to grass-roots community groups that are building power. Part of a special report about the impact of the racial reckoning of 2020 on foundations and nonprofits.
Can Philanthropy Remake Capitalism? The Chronicle of Philanthropy, June 2022. The Ford Foundation, Hewlett Foundation and Omidyar Network want to fix the problems with American capitalism. Capitalism needs a makeover, they argue, because unregulated markets are at the root of the most important social and economic problems in the U.S.
‘Fund Us Like You Want Us to Win’. The Chronicle of Philanthropy. September 2020. Foundations are putting unprecedented billions into racial equity, but some grant makers worry that too little is going to grassroots movements. Why have big foundations been so slow to fund protest? A cover story for the Chronicle of Philanthropy.
Novo Foundation, Led by a Buffett Son, Criticized for Staff and Program Cuts. The Chronicle of Philanthropy. May 2020. A change in direction at Novo, a leading funder of social justice organizations, many focused on women, disturbs many – and points to a problem with “elite philanthropy.”
A Foundation Collapsed. Its Money is Gone. What Happened is Shrouded in Mystery The Chronicle of Philanthropy. September 2019. A story about the abrupt collapse of the ZeroDivide Foundation, which misspent at least $600,000 in donor money and then disappeared. No one was then held accountable, although years later the California attorney general stepped in.
Praised for Pathbreaking Grants, Marguerite Casey Foundation CEO Said to Foster a Culture of Fear by Staff Members. The Chronicle of Philanthropy. June 2019. Luz Vega-Marquis promoted social-justice grant-making at Marguerite Casey. Inside the Seattle-based foundation, the story was very different.
Is cash better for poor people than conventional foreign aid? The New York Times. September 2018. US AID is conducting a trial that measures the impact when poor people abroad are simply given money with which to decide what’s best for themselves. I traveled to rural Rwanda to report on GiveDirectly’s work there.
Billions, squandered. The Chronicle of Philanthropy. September 2018. Foundations are coming up short by relying on active money managers and exotic financial instruments, new data shows. A story about how foundation endowments are managed, and mismanaged.
Giving in the light of reason. The Stanford Social Innovation Review. Summer 2018. A deeply-reported case study of the Open Philanthropy Project, the $14-billion philanthropic project of Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna that was the world’s biggest experiment in effective altruism, until Sam Bankman-Fried came along.
A star performer created a ‘toxic culture’ at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. The Chronicle of Philanthropy. April 2018. My investigation turns up evidence of bullying, sexual comments, and an oppressive office culture at a California community foundation where the quest from growth trumped all over values. Co-written with Megan O’Neil for the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Our reporting eventually led to the resignation of the SVCF’s chief fund raiser and its CEO, Emmett Carson.
These cheap, clean cookstoves were supposed to save millions of lives. What happened? The Washington Post. October 2015) A story for The Outlook section about the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, which was launched in 2010 by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Most of the cookstoves that it endorses fail to meet World Health Organization standards for indoor air pollution. An example of good intentions gone awry.
Animal rights
Why the future of animal welfare lies beyond the west. Vox. November 2021. How the animal rights movement is responding to the growth of meat consumption in the global south.
The fall of an animal-rights pioneer. Medium. September 2020. Alex Hershaft should have retired years ago. He didn’t. This was one of many stories about #metoo and the animal rights movement that I have written since 2018, most for my Nonprofit Chronicles blog and for Medium.
Humane Society CEO under investigation for sexual relationship with an employee. The Chronicle of Philanthropy. January 2018. This story broke the news of a #metoo scandal at the Humane Society of the United States that shortly afterwards led to the departure of Wayne Pacelle.