TITLE
How moving beyond psychedelic exceptionalism will help to end the war on drugs.

ABSTRACT
As psychedelic assisted therapies enter the mainstream, many are considering how to make these modalities accessible to people from a wide range of backgrounds. In order to make ethical decisions that expand access, it is essential to consider the impact of the war on drugs, which has disproportionately impacted Black people in the UK. We must move beyond psychedelic exceptionalism. It is important to acknowledge the ways that drug policy has been used as a tool of social and racial control, in order to grow strong coalitions with the harm reduction movement, to dismantle the war on drugs. Supporting the use of psychedelics alone, will leave many people behind and fail to end the carceral logic of drugs policing, which continues to destroy communities in the UK and beyond. This presentation will consider how learning from the past will allow us to weave different futures, rooted in care for all beings as well as bodily autonomy.

BIOGRAPHY
Camille Sapara Barton is a Social Imagineer who operates as a catalyst for social change, dedicated to creating networks of care and liveable futures. They work as a facilitator, consultant and curator across the realms of embodied social justice, grief, pleasure and drug policy. Rooted in Black feminism, ecology and harm reduction, Camille uses creativity, alongside embodied practices, to create culture change in fields ranging from psychedelic assisted therapy to arts education. They are certified in the Resilience Toolkit - an embodiment framework to navigate stress, increase resilience and grow our collective capacity to change the conditions that create systemic harm.

In recent years, Camille has taught within various programmes for psychedelic therapists in training, including Psychedelic Coalition for Health, Synthesis and CIIS to name a few. Since 2017, they have worked closely with MAPS, ensuring that MDMA Psychotherapy will be accessible to BIPOC and other communities disproportionately impacted by the war on drugs. In addition to that, they have written about drug policy and racial justice for publications including Vice, Talking Drugs, The MAPS Bulletin and Double Blind. Over the years, Camille has presented at conferences including Psychedelic Science (2017), The International Drug Policy Reform Conference (2017 & 2019), and Harm Reduction International (2019). In 2022, Camille launched the GEN Grief Toolkit - a collection of embodied grief rituals to support personal and community grief work. They are currently based in Amsterdam, working as the Director of Ecologies of Transformation, a temporary masters programme at Sandberg Institute (Amsterdam), that researches how art making and embodiment can create social change.