"Crack should be available at 7-Eleven, and I'm tired of pretending it shouldn't." This provocative statement, found within a bold email sent by a then-college senior, was more than just a shock factor: it was the intellectual hook that caught the eye of Jeremy Gardner, managing partner at Mystic Ventures, a venture fund focused on the medicinal applications of psychedelics.
Mack Luby isn't your typical investment associate. Before joining Mystic Ventures, he was a senior at Boston University, engaged in economics and the complex tapestry of U.S. drug policy. His journey into the heart of venture capitalism was not paved with typical stepping stones; it was charted through a profound interest in psychedelics, which began when Luby was "probably like nine or ten years old."
The story of how he entered the scene of medicinal psychedelics …