Breckenridge is shooting to have its regulations for natural medicine centers — where consumers can be administered certain psychedelics by a partitioner in a controlled environment — nailed down by October ahead of the statewide industry roll out in 2025.
Officials got more insight and detail at a Sept. 10 meeting about the control municipalities have over the industry. They learned about how the uncharted territory of mushrooms will look different from the rollout of recreational marijuana over a decade ago.
While officials hoped to have a similar approach and zoning for this new industry, the substances and how they are permitted to be consumed under state law will cause the introduction of psychedelics to differ from marijuana.
Colorado voters approved Proposition 122 in 2022, which created the Natural Medicine Health Act and decriminalized the personal possession, growing and sharing of five different psychedelic substances, including psilocybin.
While it decriminalized growing and sharing, it did not decriminalize the sale of these substances, which is where the healing centers come in. For now, there will be no dispensary-esque establishments in Colorado, and people interested in purchasing must do so in a supervised setting. Licenses for these facilities are anticipated to be issued in 2025.
Town attorney Kirsten Crawford reminded council the regulations the town can impose are limited mostly to time and place.
Council members previously expressed they would favor seeing these natural healing centers in a similar overlay district to that of marijuana, which mandates dispensaries be outside of the town core.
Deputy town manager Scott Reid said, per state law, nature medicine centers are allowed to be in any “already existing healthcare facilities.” The definition of “healthcare facility” can get murky, Crawford added, noting the town isn’t really at liberty to decide what is one and what isn’t.
Crawford said town staff looked into this possibility in Breckenridge’s downtown district, and they decided there was very limited opportunity for the possibility of having an existing healthcare facility in the area also become a nature medicine center.
Council member Dick Carleton asked if the town could take the same approach it does with marijuana and prohibit the natural medicine center from being in mixed-use areas that are zoned for both residential and commercial to prevent them from being near residences.
Reid said the law allows natural medicine providers to actually operate out of a residence, so that option would be off the table.
Crawford said things in Breckenridge are going to look different than they will in the rest of the state.
“We are in a different situation than almost every other jurisdiction,” Crawford said, noting most jurisdictions have industrial-, commercial- and residential-zoned districts while Breckenridge has just residential and commercial zones.
She said this matters because most jurisdictions will put the healing centers themselves in the commercial zone district and the cultivation centers that provide the product in the industrial zone.
She said, because of this, Breckenridge won’t be able to model how it deals with its healing centers off of other towns and will have to pave its own path. She added what the town has the most control over is distance in terms of location, meaning regulating how far the establishment can be from places like schools.
Council member Todd Rankin said he would see a larger distance requirement than the state mandated one of 1,000 feet, suggesting possibly 2,000 feet.
“We can’t set the regulations so that it essentially prohibits the opportunity (to have a natural healing center) in Breck,” town manager Shannon Haynes said.
Crawford said the law is written in a way to ensure the regulations made by municipalities aren’t “unreasonable” and too hefty of distance regulations could teeter that line.
Speaking about the regulations overall, council member Marika Page said she didn’t think the natural medicine industries didn’t need to be more regulated than the marijuana industry, noting she thought the 1,000-foot regulation was fine. Council member Carleton and Carol Saade agreed.
Breckenridge is shooting to have its regulations for natural medicine centers — where consumers can be administered certain psychedelics by a partitioner in a controlled environment — nailed down by October ahead of the statewide… Read More