Brun Gonzalez is a harm reducer that has been involved in drug policy and human rights advocacy since 2009, he was the regional representative of the Latin American Network of People who Use Drugs and Chair of the Board of Directors of the International Network of People who Use Drugs

As part of the global process of developing new regulatory models that help to address and alleviate the harms created by the war on drugs it is important to pay attention to the experimental approaches that have been taking shape recently around psychoactive plants and substances that have traditional and medicinal uses in countries around Latin America; while some of this changes have been precipitated by psychoactive tourism and external influences, it is primordial to have the traditional cultures and communities at the center of the conversation and being able to generate sustainable guidelines and horizontal structures that promote growth for the already heavily affected and marginalized groups, avoiding at all times to reproduce pre-existing colonial dynamics.

Indigenous-led networks and organizations can help create strategies to guarantee the inclusion of the traditional knowledge and practices through their community members that would foster self-regulated processes, allowing the participation of different actors from the international presences that could have interest related to the practices and the plants themselves, as it happens around Ayahuasca, Peyote and Iboga, just to name a few.

In Mexico, as well as in Latin America, there have been some new experimental approaches that are allowing indigenous groups to join forces with civil society partners to work inwards and outwards with their own communities and families and also with the people that come from the outside to partake in Ceremonies or simply access the medicines in their own ecosystems, specifically regarding Peyote and Mushrooms, focusing on reducing and even reverting the impact that the unsustainable overexploitation of the natural resources is having on the medicines, people and the surroundings.

This presentation will shed some light on these projects and grass-root efforts that are ongoing and are really critical and important for the preservation of the traditional practices and medicines.