The UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs' 2023 recommendation to move psilocybin from Schedule 1 to Schedule 2 — and why the government has not yet acted.
The ACMD published "Consideration of Barriers to Research: Part 2" on 22 December 2023 — a formal set of recommendations to reduce the legal friction blocking clinical research with Schedule 1 drugs, including psilocybin and MDMA.
The report did not recommend moving psilocybin to Schedule 2 outright. Instead, it targeted the administrative layer: the requirement that researchers obtain a separate Home Office controlled drugs licence even after they have already cleared MHRA, Health Research Authority, and ethics committee approvals.
The ACMD's core recommendations were three. First, universities and hospitals should be exempt from the Home Office licence requirement to possess, supply, or administer Schedule 1 substances for research. Second, any clinical trial with existing MHRA or HRA approval should not need an extra Home Office licence on top. Third, organisations already licensed to supply Schedule 2–5 substances should be permitted to supply Schedule 1 substances for research without a separate licence.
Rescheduling from Schedule 1 to Schedule 2 is the bigger policy lever. It would allow prescribing and remove most research barriers at once. But rescheduling requires the Home Secretary to amend the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001 — a more politically exposed move than a licensing pilot.
The ACMD chose the licensing route because it can be done administratively without changing the schedule number. It is a faster path for researchers, even if it leaves psilocybin legally in the same class as heroin under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.
Schedule 1 of the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001 covers drugs with no currently recognised medical use in the UK. Working with these substances requires a Home Office controlled drugs licence, regardless of other approvals already in place.
That licence costs around £5,000 and can take months to process. It also requires researchers to install enhanced physical security for storing the substance — locked storage beyond the standard requirements for Schedule 2 drugs. For a university lab running multiple studies, these costs and delays stack up fast.
Researchers must also satisfy the Home Office that each specific site and each specific researcher is approved. If a study moves institution, the licence process starts again. A 2021 qualitative study in the journal Drug Science, Policy and Law found that Schedule 1 researchers described the process as discouraging, stigmatising, and disproportionate compared to the risks of the substances being studied.
Moving psilocybin to Schedule 2 under the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001 would allow licensed doctors to legally prescribe it for the first time in the UK.
Researchers would no longer need a separate Home Office licence. Universities and NHS hospitals working with Schedule 2 drugs already operate under standard controlled drug rules — the same rules used for opioids and benzodiazepines in clinical settings. The administrative overhead drops sharply.
Psilocybin would still be tightly regulated. Patients could not buy it at a pharmacy without a prescription. There would be no recreational market. But the path from clinical trial to approved therapy would be shorter, and a prescribing psychiatrist could theoretically use it once a licensed product existed. That is the gap between where the UK is now and where Australia has already gone.
No psilocybin product is currently licensed by the MHRA as a medicine. Moving to Schedule 2 would remove the research licence barrier, but doctors still could not prescribe psilocybin until a company takes a product through full MHRA approval. That is a multi-year process even after rescheduling. The ACMD's licence-exemption approach tries to speed that clinical-data phase so an MHRA application becomes possible sooner.
The UK government published its formal response to the ACMD's report on 16 July 2025 — 18 months after the report landed.
The government accepted most ACMD recommendations in principle. It confirmed the Home Office would design a pilot scheme allowing universities, university colleges, and hospitals to work with Schedule 1 substances without a separate controlled drugs licence — provided the trial has MHRA or HRA approval. A cross-government working group including the Home Office, MHRA, and Health Research Authority was established to manage implementation.
The government made no commitment to reschedule psilocybin. In a written parliamentary answer in October 2025, the government stated it had "made no recent assessment of the potential merits of rescheduling psilocybin." It separately tasked the ACMD with reviewing lessons from the 2018 cannabis-based products rescheduling to inform any future decision on psilocybin.
Australia took the bolder step and did it first. On 3 February 2023 — 10 months before the ACMD published its report — Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) announced that psilocybin would move from Schedule 9 (prohibited substance) to Schedule 8 (controlled medicine), effective 1 July 2023.
Under Australia's model, authorised psychiatrists can prescribe psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression through the TGA's Authorised Prescriber scheme. It is not available at a pharmacy — sessions happen in a controlled clinical setting with psychotherapy. But it is legally prescribed medicine, not a clinical trial.
The UK, by contrast, has not rescheduled. Its ACMD recommendations are narrower in scope, and even the accepted pilot has not been implemented as of mid-2026. The table below compares the two approaches.
| Feature | UK (ACMD Review, 2023) | Australia (TGA, 2023) |
|---|---|---|
| Psilocybin scheduling | Schedule 1 — no recognised medical use | Schedule 8 — controlled medicine |
| Can doctors prescribe psilocybin? | No | Yes, authorised psychiatrists only |
| Research licence required? | Yes (pilot may remove this for approved trials) | No separate research licence needed |
| Effective date of change | No rescheduling date set | 1 July 2023 |
| Governing body | Home Office / ACMD | Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) |
| Regulatory trigger | ACMD recommendation (advisory) | TGA scheduling decision (regulatory) |
When the Australia model matters more: if you are a patient seeking access to psilocybin-assisted therapy in an English-speaking country right now, Australia is the only jurisdiction where authorised prescription is legal. The UK remains research-only. See our Australia psychedelic rescheduling guide for the full picture.
Imperial College London's Centre for Psychedelic Research is the most prominent institution affected by UK scheduling rules.
The Centre, launched in 2019 as the world's first dedicated psychedelic research centre, has published landmark trials on psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression. It runs ongoing clinical work — including a 2024 NIHR-funded trial on psilocybin for opioid use disorder — but each study requires its own Home Office licence, separate from MHRA and ethics approvals, adding cost and lead time before a single participant is dosed. The University of Exeter has also run psilocybin studies under the same constraints.
Beyond research teams, a growing number of UK mental health companies have raised capital on the expectation that rescheduling will follow. Without it, no company can bring a psilocybin product to UK patients — even if it clears MHRA clinical review — because prescribing a Schedule 1 drug is not legally possible. The ACMD pilot addresses the research bottleneck; it does not solve the prescribing gap.
No. Psilocybin remains a Schedule 1 drug under the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001 in the UK as of 2026. The ACMD published a report in December 2023 recommending ways to ease research barriers, but the government did not reschedule psilocybin. Instead, in July 2025 the Home Office accepted a pilot to exempt universities and NHS clinical trial sites from needing a separate Home Office licence for Schedule 1 research.
The ACMD's December 2023 report recommended that universities and hospitals be exempt from needing a Home Office controlled drugs licence to possess and use Schedule 1 substances for research. It also recommended that researchers with MHRA or Health Research Authority approval should not need an extra licence. These changes would not move psilocybin to Schedule 2 — psilocybin would stay Schedule 1, but the licensing burden for researchers would drop significantly.
Schedule 1 of the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001 covers substances with no recognised medical use in the UK. Possessing, supplying, or administering a Schedule 1 drug for research requires a Home Office controlled drugs licence that costs around £5,000, can take months to obtain, and requires enhanced physical security for storage. Psilocybin, LSD, and raw MDMA are Schedule 1 drugs in the UK.
Moving psilocybin to Schedule 2 would allow licensed doctors to prescribe it and would let researchers at universities and hospitals work with it under standard controlled drug rules, without a separate Home Office research licence. It would remain tightly controlled, but the barriers to clinical research and eventual patient access would fall substantially.
Australia went further and faster. On 3 February 2023, Australia's TGA rescheduled psilocybin from Schedule 9 (prohibited) to Schedule 8 (controlled medicine), effective 1 July 2023. Authorised Australian psychiatrists can now legally prescribe psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression. The UK has not made a similar rescheduling move; psilocybin remains Schedule 1 and cannot be prescribed.
As of mid-2026, the Home Office is designing a pilot scheme to let universities and approved NHS clinical trial sites work with Schedule 1 substances without a separate Home Office licence. A cross-government working group — including the Home Office, MHRA, and Health Research Authority — oversees implementation. The ACMD has also been asked to review lessons from cannabis rescheduling to advise whether full psilocybin rescheduling makes sense. No rescheduling date has been announced.
The Psychedelic Journal's legalization tracker follows the UK ACMD pilot, the government's formal response, and every jurisdiction where rescheduling is moving — so you see changes as they happen.
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