Welcome to my latest Weekly Weed Report, on the thriving marijuana and psychedelics industries. Below is a condensed transcript; the video contains several charts and further details.

In the U.S. alone, about 8.9 million adults take antidepressants to treat depressive disorders. However, for about 30% of these suffering souls, the medications don’t work. Hence the enormous opportunity for psychedelics, as a treatment and a business.

To date, more than 50 publicly traded companies have emerged to tap into the psychedelics mega-trend. Many of these companies also are researching the medicinal benefits of marijuana.

“Big Pharma” is plowing considerable resources into researching psychedelics, helping pull these drugs into the pharmaceutical mainstream.

LSD and magic mushrooms have gone from a hippie movement to an extremely lucrative market. When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other federal authorities remove legal impediments (and one day they will), the market will mushroom…pun intended.

Psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms), lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), and similar mind-bending psychotropic substances remain illegal at the federal level in the United States. These drugs have been flash points in the American culture wars for decades.

Psychedelics is on the cusp of becoming a multi-billion-dollar juggernaut. It’s only a matter of when, not if, that psychedelics and marijuana become legal on the federal level, and then the investment floodgates will swing wide open.

Watch This Video: Pot News: Dispatches From The Heartland

Most political observers expect psilocybin to receive approval for the treatment of depression from the FDA by the end of this decade, perhaps in the next few years. Psilocybin is positioned to become the next blockbuster, akin to Prozac.

Global health organizations report that one in five people around the world will suffer from a neuropsychiatric disease at some point in their lifetime. The world is currently home to 7.7 billion people. Do the math. We’re talking about 1.54 billion folks in need of treatment. The medical establishment will need scalable, easily administered treatments. Psilocybin and LSD fit the bill.

Several recent studies have found that that psychedelic drugs are impressively effective at alleviating depression and anxiety, even among patients who have been resistant to conventional prescription treatments.

One subject of debate is whether psychedelics can be administered in doses that remove the hallucinations, the “trip” aspect, and still treat psychological ailments. The scientific community is divided into two camps:

1) patients can be micro-dosed in ways that help their symptoms (without tripping); or

2) the mystical, revelatory nature of tripping is inherent to the therapy.

Whether hallucinations are part and parcel of the efficacy of psychedelics is now a topic of fierce debate among scientists.

Some researchers are striving to develop molecules based on psychedelics that convey the therapeutic benefits of the drugs but without the hallucinations. But perhaps the powerfully emotional “epiphanies” experienced during hallucinogenic trips are a key to the benefits of these drugs.

The Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research has found that psychedelic hallucinations cause cognitive shifts in the brain that are long-lasting, indeed sometimes permanent.

Psychedelic drugs kick-start the prolific creation of new synapses in the brain, while at the same time the feeling of connectedness with the cosmos creates new pathways of thinking. Patients who’ve experienced psychedelic treatment describe it as several years of psychotherapy, compressed into a single day.

These are profound matters to ponder. And lots of money is at stake.

Don’t wait until it’s too late to cash in. Want to profit from the trends I’ve just described? I urge you to read my new book: The Wide World of Weed and Psychedelics. It’s your definitive guide for making money in the thriving cannabis and psychedelics industries. Click here to get your free copy.

John Persinos is the editorial director of Investing Daily.

Subscribe to John’s video channel: