Commercialization and Appropriation

As interest in psychedelics has grown, plants and fungi that belong to particular peoples have become the subject of patents, tourism, retreats and clinical research. This page looks at what community-authored and scholarly sources say about that, and where the facts are still unclear. It is information only and does not recommend any product, retreat or provider.

Two words worth defining

Commercialization means turning a traditional plant, knowledge or practice into something sold or licensed. Appropriation is a contested word. In this context sources use it for taking or profiting from cultural knowledge or practices without the consent, credit or benefit of the people who hold them. Not every commercial activity is appropriation, and the sources below disagree about how much of it is happening.

The ayahuasca patent case

In 1986 the U.S. government issued Plant Patent No. 5,751 to Loren Miller, claiming rights over a supposed variety of the Banisteriopsis caapi vine, which he called "Da Vine".[1] In 1999 the Center for International Environmental Law asked the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, on behalf of the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA) and the Amazon Coalition, to cancel the patent. They argued that the plant's features were already well known and counted as "prior art".[1] A 1998 statement by COICA to the World Intellectual Property Organization says the patent holder "admitted having collected the sample from the farmstead of an indigenous family of the Ecuadorian Amazon", and calls the grant "biopiracy".[2] We did not read a source on how that request was finally resolved, so we do not state an outcome.

How many patents are there today?

A 2026 article by two authors writing for the Chacruna Institute examines patent claims linked to ayahuasca. It notes that a raw search had counted 543 registered patents, which made a strong impression at an Indigenous conference.[3] The authors then read the claims themselves. Their search selected 279 documents. They sorted those into categories and found:

The authors conclude that active requests implying undue appropriation are rare.[3] This is one team's analysis, based on one search method, and it is an opinion article rather than a peer-reviewed study. The same article reports that a 2025 Indigenous ayahuasca conference adopted a letter opposing patents and demanding consultation and consent.[3] Both points matter: the legal risk may be smaller than first feared, and the demand for consent remains.

Tourism, retreats and local effects

Sources describe several kinds of pressure on communities.

• Tourism. The Chacruna article says ayahuasca spread worldwide through churches and through neo-shamanic tourism centered in the Peruvian jungle.[3] The same piece points to retreats and clinics in South and Central America that treat people from wealthy countries.[3]
• Peyote. A member of the Native American Church and researcher lists "psychedelic tourism" among human activities driving peyote's decline.[4] See Peyote Conservation.
• Mazatec communities. An educational profile of the healer María Sabina says an American's 1957 magazine article about a mushroom ceremony drew waves of Western seekers and that the sacred tradition in Huautla was "fundamentally altered by commercialization and tourism".[5] We treat this as one account of a complex history, not a full ethnography.
• San Pedro (huachuma). Curanderos of northern Peru state that the trade in wild cactus exploits Indigenous communities while the cactus is cut unsustainably.[6]
• Iboga. The Chacruna Institute reports that rising international demand has contributed to shortages and higher prices in Gabon, which affects the Bwiti who use it ceremonially.[7]

What Indigenous leaders and scholars ask for

A 2026 commentary in the Journal of Psychopharmacology says Indigenous communities have stewarded these medicines for centuries but have been marginalized by "extractive research, commercialization, and policy exclusion". It argues for free, prior and informed consent, equitable benefit-sharing and Indigenous leadership.[8] The Chacruna article links such principles to the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Nagoya Protocol.[3] An isolated compound or a clinical trial does not carry any of these obligations away. See Indigenous Traditions, Ethics and Conservation.

What this page does not cover

It does not rank retreats, name sellers, or judge individual people. If you want broader background on respectful use of traditional knowledge in general, see Sustainability and Commercialization of Traditional Medicine.