Psilocybin legislation in the US
Roughly one third of the country has passed or hopes to pass new psilocybin laws
The legal landscape around psilocybin has changed rapidly in recent years, a sign of a larger shift in public attitudes toward drug use. In the last newsletter, I took a look at the new medical psilocybin and MDMA program that is scheduled to launch in Australia on July 1st. Today I will review the current state of psilocybin legislation throughout the US.
A Timeline from 2019-2023
May 2019: Denver, CO passes Initiative 301
June 2019: Oakland, CA City Council approves a Decriminalize Nature resolution
January 2020: Somerville, MA City Council approves a Decriminalize Nature resolution
September 2020: Washtenaw County, MI City Council approves a Decriminalize Nature resolution; Ann Arbor, MI City Council approves a Decriminalize Nature resolution
November 2020: Oregon passes Measure 109 to legalize psilocybin therapy and Measure 110 to decriminalize all drugs; Washington, DC passes Initiative 81, another Decriminalize Nature policy
December 2020: Santa Cruz, CA City Council approves a Decriminalize Nature resolution
February 2021: Cambridge, MA City Council approves a Decriminalize Nature resolution
November 2021: Voters in Detroit, MI approve Proposal E, a Decriminalize Nature resolution
March 2022: Hazel Park, MI City Council approves a Decriminalize Nature resolution
September 2022: San Francisco, CA Board of Supervisors approves a Decriminalize Nature resolution
November 2022: Colorado passes the Natural Medicine Health Act; several cities and counties in Oregon vote to ban psilocybin services
December 2022: California State Senator Scott Wiener reintroduces a bill to decriminalize psilocybin, DMT, mescaline, and ibogaine.
February 2023: As of February 2023, there are psilocybin-related campaigns underway in Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia
Various political campaigns for psilocybin policy reform have existed since at least 2017. The first of these to result in the successful passage of legislation was in Denver, Colorado, where voters approved Initiative 301 in May 2019. Initiative 301 made the use and possession of psilocybin mushrooms “the lowest law enforcement priority in Denver.”
Just weeks later, a similar but more expansive bill was passed in Oakland, California. The Oakland resolution was submitted by city’s Decriminalize Nature campaign and included not only psilocybin mushrooms but also mescaline-containing cacti, iboga, as well as the various DMT-containing species used in the preparation of ayahuasca. The resolution was approved by Oakland’s City Council in June 2019.
A nearly identical policy was approved by the City Council of Somerville, Massachusetts in January, 2020. And later that year, in September, another Decriminalize Nature resolution was approved by the City Council in Washtenaw County, Michigan.
November 2020 was particularly busy for psilocybin. Oregon voters approved Measures 109 and 110, which legalized psilocybin therapy and decriminalized possession of all drugs, respectively. The same month, voters in Washington, DC approved Initiative 81, which was itself a Decriminalize Nature resolution nearly identical to those passed in Oakland, Somerville, etc.
And yet another Decriminalize Nature resolution was passed before the year’s end, this one in Santa Cruz, California and, like most of the others, approved by the local City Council. This rapid succession of ballot initiatives and council-approved resolutions made 2020 the busiest year on record for psilocybin reform. But, as we’ll see shortly, it is quite likely that 2020’s gains will be outpaced in 2023.
Compared to 2019 and 2020, 2021 was a relatively slow year for psilocybin reform. Another Decriminalize Nature resolution was approved by the City Council in Cambridge, Massachusetts in February. And in November, voters in Detroit, Michigan strongly approved Proposal E, also a Decriminalize Nature resolution.
The pace picked up again in 2022. In March, the City Council in Hazel Park, Michigan approved a Decriminalize Nature resolution. In September, the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco, California also approved another nearly identical Decriminalize Nature resolution.
In November 2022, Colorado voters approved the Natural Health Medicine Act, which removed criminal penalties for the adult use of psilocybin, DMT, mescaline, and ibogaine and established a regulatory framework for the state to develop a therapeutic psilocybin program. At roughly the same time, several cities and counties in Oregon voted to ban psilocybin services which would otherwise have been allowed by Measure 109.
The following month, California State Senator Scott Wiener reintroduced a bill to decriminalize psilocybin, DMT, mescaline (excluding peyote), and ibogaine. It is currently making its way through the bureaucratic maze that is state governance.
That brings us to 2023. As of right now there are psilocybin-related campaigns underway in Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia.
Four of the ten most populous states in the US have witnessed the passage of some type of psilocybin-related policy or are currently seeing psilocybin-related campaigns develop. Of the fifteen highest populated states, seven of them have either passed some form of psilocybin reform or have campaigns in development.
Overall, more than 112 million people—roughly one third of the US population—now live in a state that has seen psilocybin policy reform efforts in the last few years.
1/3 of the US population lives in a state that has seen psilocybin policy reform efforts in the last few years.
But wait...there’s a catch
Although the media has spun this legislation as “decriminalization,” most of the above-mentioned reform is actually quite minimal, and is a far cry from what most people think when they hear the word “decriminalize.”
Independent journalist Sasha Sisko has drawn attention to the misleading ways in which the above-mentioned policies are described in the popular press. In a piece for Double Blind, they examine the nuanced reality of San Francisco’s recent Decriminalize Nature resolution which, like the others, does not remove criminal penalties but merely asks police to “deprioritize” charges related to the use or possession of psilocybin, etc.
None of the Decriminalize Nature resolutions mentioned above actually remove criminal penalties for the drugs in question. Instead, they instruct law enforcement to consider such charges their “lowest priority.” In other words, they are a very fancy way of politely asking the cops not to arrest people for mushrooms, etc. But these resolutions do not actually remove the relevant criminal penalties. Therefore, people can still be arrested for the use or possession of psilocybin mushrooms, even in jurisdictions which are said to have “decriminalized” them.
And while none of the above-mentioned policies condone unlicensed sale of psilocybin, plenty of folks have taken advantage of popular misunderstanding and started to openly sell psilocybin products, sometimes even from retail outlets. Unsurprisingly, the federal government is not down with this.
For example, DEA agents raided someone’s apartment in Denver, Colorado where they found several pounds of fresh and dried psilocybin mushrooms. The DEA had begun to investigate the tenant after reading an account in The Denver Post in which they anonymously claimed to make $2,000 a month selling shrooms. The resulting raid occurred in September 2019, just four months after the city’s voters approved Initiative 301.
In November 2022, a store in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, California was raided after police received a tip that the store was selling psilocybin products.
And in December 2022, a business in Portland, Oregon named Shroom House was raided. Police found and seized a “large amount of suspected psilocybin products” as well as several thousand dollars in cash.
So as we can see, although the slew of new psilocybin-related policies has been touted as “decriminalization,” they are, if anything, decriminalization lite. Community organizer and drug policy advocate Garth Mullins recently described the new drug decriminalization policy in British Columbia, Canada as “diet decrim.” And I can think of no better term to describe the various psilocybin-related “deprioritize” bills that have been passed recently.
They offer us the spectacle of decriminalization without the substance.
Moving forward...
While the above-mentioned policy changes leave a lot to be desired, they nonetheless represent a notable shift in attitude towards psilocybin and illegal drugs in general. And although we are already four years in to this extended psilocybin experiment, it really is just the beginning.
Brace yourselves for a busy year ahead in psilocybin reform. Going forward, the number of new bills and the nationwide market for psilocybin will likely only get bigger and bigger, even if they take a few more years (or decades, for that matter) to reach full maturity.
Thanks for reading.