Kyle Jaeger, writing for Marijuana Moment:
As psychedelics reform efforts pick up across the U.S., there’s an increasing weariness among advocates about the potential corporatization that may follow.
That’s why many found it alarming when a California-based company announced on Thursday that it had successfully trademarked the word “psilocybin,” the main psychoactive constituent of so-called magic mushrooms.
Psilocybin™ is a brand of chocolates that do not contain the psychedelic itself but are meant to “begin educating, enlightening and supporting the community in upgrading their inner vibrations in order to get everything they want of their time here on earth,” according to a mission statement.
It’s been more than ten years since I took a mass media law class in college to earn my journalism undergraduate degree, but even armed with the info I learned in that course I have to admit that I was surprised to see that this kind of a thing is even possible, much less something that actually happened already.
After looking into it I discovered that two other companies have submitted requests to trademark drug terms. Weed Cellars trademarked “weed” last year and MedMen attempted to trademark the word “cannabis” a couple years ago, although that would’ve only applied to printing the word on clothing.
The fact that these brands are getting exclusive rights to use widely-accepted names of drugs is beyond dumbfounding—it’s just plain dumb.