Jamie Brownlee – författare

From schools to hospitals, from utilities to food banks, over the past thirty years corporatization has transformed the public sector in Canada. Economic elites take control of public institutions and use business metrics to evaluate their performance, transforming public programs into corporate revenue streams.

Psychedelics have long been sanctioned as dangerous substances. Today, psychedelics are enjoying a new found appeal, even being idealized as wonder drugs. As part of the so-called psychedelic renaissance, reports abound about the benefits of these substances for remedying individual mental health issues and bringing about social change. Offering a critical view of these developments, Psychedelic Capitalism locates this renaissance in the context of corporate capture, medicalization, and the war on drugs. Wealthy entrepreneurs are investing billions in the psychedelics industry. Biotechnology firms are racing to capture intellectual property and monopolize psychedelic supply chains. Venture capitalists are leveraging the prospects of a lucrative mass market. Together, these actors are appropriating Indigenous knowledge and claiming ownership over substances that have been in the public domain for centuries. Brownlee and Walby ask if corporations and the medical establishment are suited to steward the mainstreaming of psychedelics, raising concerns with how the psychedelic renaissance is entrenching systems of inequality, limiting access and affordability, and increasing the reach of drug war surveillance and criminalization. Interrogating the consequences of psychedelic capitalism, the authors point to what could be gained from a just and equitable psychedelic future rooted in the public interest.

Ruling Canada critically examines Canada’s “economic elite”–a collection of the country’s richest and most powerful individuals, many of whom preside over Canada’s largest corporations. Brownlee argues that this corporate elite is increasingly unified and class conscious. As a direct result, a broad array of state policies and programs have been cut and/or implemented which serve the interests of this elite minority at the expense of most Canadian citizens. Business elite solidarity is possible because of a several unifying mechanisms: interlocking directorates, the structure of corporate ownership/control networks, the mass media, intersectoral policy organizations, business-oriented think-tanks and foundations, and corporate ties to the state and political system. In the face of formidable corporate domination and a growing threat to democracy in Canada, Brownlee emphasizes that existing relations are not inevitable and could be modified through networks of concerned citizens coming together to challenge the political and economic status quo.