The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a Harvard Medical School study of the impact of MDMA (ecstasy) on anxiety suffered by cancer patients. The study, to be conducted by Dr. John Halpern, will be sponsored by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). In South Carolina a MAPS-sponsored study of MDMA therapy to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is already underway.

“The longest day of winter has passed, and maybe so has the decades-long era of resistance to psychedelic research,” said MAPS Projects and Communications Director Brandy Doyle in a statement put out by the group late last month. “This ensures that we will now be able to begin psychedelic research at Harvard for the first time since studies ended in 1965, doing it carefully with the advantage of hindsight and the lessons learned from the past.”

In other MAPS news, the group is moving ahead with plans for a lawsuit to overturn a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) decision to block the group’s plans to sponsor a controlled facility to grow medical-marijuana for research purposes at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst.

Before the Harvard study may commence, the DEA must first grant Halpern a Schedule I license. MAPS expects that process to take up to two months.