For Thanksgiving, here are 23 things for which I’m grateful in 2023. Some are drawn from the world of philanthropy–so please read on if you are planning to make donations during the holiday season–while others are political or personal. In no particular order. Philanthropy Effective altruism: The brand has been…

Trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation are generous with other people’s money. — Over the years, the legendary investor Warren Buffett has lamented the failure of boards of directors to do their job. “When seeking directors, CEOs don’t look for pit bulls,” Buffett once wrote. “It’s the cocker spaniel that gets taken home.” Buffett was talking about corporate boards. The same is true…

The clinical trial that set the stage for today’s fast-growing ketamine industry runs just three pages long and involved only eight patients. It was published, not in the New England Journal of Medicine or The Lancet, but in a specialized journal called Biological Psychiatry. Psychiatrists at the Yale School of…

The crusade against vaping will do more harm than good. — When Ocean City, MD, banned smoking and vaping from its boardwalk, the city manager said visitors to the popular seaside resort would police themselves. “Will we haul people off to jail for smoking on the boardwalk?” asked David Recor. “No, that’s not our approach.” It hasn’t worked out that way. …

A report from MAPS Psychedelic Science 2023 conference. — Historic is a word much overused in journalism, so we’ll leave it to others to say whether Psychedelic Science 2023 will be long remembered. …

Will the Movement for Black Lives improve the material well-being of Black Americans? Will big banks? — This week, The Chronicle of Philanthropy published two long stories (here and here) about foundations, nonprofits and racial justice. …

MDMA is a wonderful medicine. This startup company wants to make it even better. — Psychedelic medicines are generating excitement everywhere — among academic researchers and therapists, in the press, even with members of Congress — everywhere, that is, but among investors. Several startups developing psychedelic therapies have gone bust. Shares in others sell for less than the price of a latte. …

Philip Morris International, Altria and BAT claim that they want to help end smoking by selling less harmful nicotine products. — In Sweden, the popularity of snus, an oral tobacco product placed between the teeth and gums, has helped drive the percentage of adults who smoke down to six percent, lower than any other country in Europe. Sweden also has the lowest rate of tobacco-related mortality in the EU.

It’s developing new compounds and attracting investors — Many startup companies developing psychedelic therapies work with classic mind-altering substances such as psilocybin, mescaline and LSD. Jonathan Sporn, the founder and chief executive of Gilgamesh Pharmaceutical, has no interest in any of them. “There’s no way in hell we’re going to develop a generic drug,” Sporn says. The 64-year-old…