Nick Carter says easing controls on MDMA will allow drug to be used as alternative treatment for those with PTSD
A former head of the British military is calling for the government to ease restrictions on the party drug MDMA so that it can be tested more cheaply as a treatment for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Sir Nick Carter, who was chief of the defence staff until 2021, said existing regulations meant a single gram of “medical grade” MDMA cost about £10,000 compared with a street price of about £40, inflating the cost of trials.
The Sandhurst-trained former general wants Britain to press ahead with further trials after a study in Nature Medicine showed that PTSD symptoms were eliminated in 71% of the 52 cases where MDMA-assisted therapy was tested.
Carter said the initial results showed that MDMA therapy had the potential to be more effective than existing treatments for PTSD, which affects about 9% of military veterans who served at the time of deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
