The Massachusetts Puritans of the 17th century viewed all of life’s pleasures, even the simplest ones, as insidious entrapments when compared to the eternal happiness of heaven.

What would Cotton Mather and his minions have made of the Bay State’s 21st century legal embrace of marijuana and psychedelics? I was born and raised in Massachusetts and even for me, the trend represents a remarkable cultural shift. My native state may be politically liberal, but the founding ethos of the Puritans still runs deep.

However, when it comes to attitudes about psychotropic drugs, it’s a new dawn around the world. Hence the emergence of a growing and lucrative industry based on cannabis and its mind-bending ancillaries such as magic mushrooms and LSD.

A fourth Massachusetts city just passed psychedelics policy reform, with the Easthampton City Council’s vote on Wednesday in favor of decriminalizing a wide range of psychedelics.

On the state level, Massachusetts already allows the purchase and use of recreational and medical marijuana.

The Easthampton City Council legislation states that the council “maintains that the use and possession of all controlled substances should be understood first and primarily as an issue of public health by city departments, agencies, boards, commissions, and all employees of the city.”

The legislation also states: “It should be policy of the City of Easthampton that the arrest of persons for using or possessing controlled substances for personal adult therapeutic, excepting Lophophora and animal-derived controlled substances, shall be amongst the lowest law enforcement priority for the City of Easthampton.”

The advocacy group Bay Staters for Natural Medicine applauded the move:

“This is a victory for the health and safety of our communities…This signals to our state lawmakers we will not tolerate an over-regulated purely clinical model that makes these medicines unaffordable for working class people.”

The Massachusetts cities of Northampton, Somerville, and Cambridge also have decriminalized psychedelics.

Rocky Mountain high…

Denver, Colorado in 2019 became the first jurisdiction in the U.S. to decriminalize psilocybin fungi. The historic legal change spawned a wave of similar efforts throughout the country.

Several jurisdictions, from coast to coast, have decriminalized psychedelics. A raft of reform initiatives are on state ballots for the 2021 off-year and 2022 midterm elections.

Read This Story: Pot and Psychedelics Face Pivotal Elections

In a recent study of adults with major depression, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers reported that doses of the psychedelic substance psilocybin (found in magic mushrooms), given with supportive talk psychotherapy, produced rapid and large reductions in depressive symptoms.

Johns Hopkins’ latest research also shows that psychedelics and marijuana can help alleviate addiction to other harmful drugs (see tweet).

Empirical research suggests that marijuana and psychedelics can actually cure drug addiction. Pot already is proving its efficacy in curbing opioid addiction and deaths.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that nearly 70,000 Americans die every year from drug overdoses. About 70% of all drug overdose deaths are now caused by opioids, a class of drugs that includes prescription painkillers as well as heroin and dangerous synthetic versions like fentanyl.

Major evidence that medical marijuana can cure opioid abuse arrived last year, when Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center released a study that opioid prescription rates have dropped on average nearly 20% in states where medical marijuana is legal compared to states where pot is illegal.

The authors of the study said the results highlight the need to provide cannabis to patients as a pain management alternative. Cannabis is especially therapeutic for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Marijuana and psychedelics can be used to cure drug addiction? What a long, strange trip it’s been. Rest assured, new public companies are coming to the fore to exploit these trends. Big Pharma, institutional investors, and venture capitalists are taking notice, too.

As this article makes clear, there’s lots of money to be made on the increasing legalization of pot and psychedelics. For our latest report on the best investment opportunities in cannabis and related substances, click here.

John Persinos is the editorial director of Investing Daily. You can reach him at: mailbag@investingdaily.com. To subscribe to his video channel, follow this link.