Legislative committees in Washington State heard testimony last week on a plan to create a regulated system of legal psilocybin services aimed at promoting mental health and wellness. But while some commenters said they supported the proposal, most opposed it as either too lenient or, conversely, too restrictive.
Drafters of the bills, SB 5201 and HB 1433, acknowledged feeling stuck in between the two camps but emphasized the need to move forward on expanding access to facilitated psilocybin services through licensed providers.
“We’re in the middle,” testified Aaron Loehr of the Coalition for Better Community Health, who helped draft the legislation. “On one side, we have a group that wants full decriminalization. They want unrestricted use with no safety and no accountability. On the other side, we have Big Pharma and psychiatrists who are driven by market protectionism.”
If approved, the legislation would allow adults 21 and older to legally use natural psilocybin products, such as dried mushrooms and mushroom tea, with the support of a trained facilitator. Product manufacturers, service centers and testing labs would be licensed by the state.
It’s modeled largely after first-in-the-nation programs in Oregon and Colorado as well as a pilot program in Utah. Loehr said proponents hired the attorneys who wrote Oregon’s and Colorado’s initiatives “and had them fix known issues.”
But at legislative committee hearings on Wednesday and Thursday, both the Senate bill and House version were met with harsh criticism during public comment.
“This is a recreational bill masquerading as a medical bill,” said Rebecca Allen, a Seattle neuropsychologist who described herself as “actually the most active psilocybin researcher in the state of Washington right now.”
Allen said more research is necessary before psilocybin can be safely and effectively used to treat patients broadly. “A quasi-medical veneer does not good healthcare make,” she told lawmakers.
Others who spoke, including organizers behind successful efforts to deprioritize enforcement of laws against psilocybin at the local level in Seattle, Tacoma, Port Townsend and Jefferson County, came out in opposition to the reform, which they said would likely be cost-prohibitive for many Washington residents and encourage heightened enforcement against personal and community use of psilocybin.
Erin Redding, president of the Port Townsend Psychedelic Society and a board member of REACH Washington, which supports psychedelic access and community use, spoke in what she described as “passionate opposition” to the plan.
“It unjustly legalizes paid, regulated use while continuing to criminalize the thriving networks of people who are already healing themselves with psilocybin—safely, effectively, with community accountability and often for free,” Redding said of the legislation. “Not only that, a regulated system incentivizes enforcement of those operating outside of it and puts those currently seeking individual or community healing at increased risk.”
She noted that in addition to deprioritizing psilocybin enforcement, the local resolutions already adopted also encourage decriminalization at the state level, with Jefferson County “specifically asking that no regulated system be passed without decriminalization happening first or at the same time.”
Tatiana Luz, co-director of the Psychedelic Medicine Alliance of Washington, which is also a member of REACH, said she initially supported regulated models like Oregon’s but now opposes that approach.
“Before the first service centers opened, I supported this model,” Luz said. “But after seeing reports of a slow rollout, extremely high costs and multiple service centers closing in less than two years, I no longer do.”
“In Oregon, psilocybin services were supposed to help residents and pay for itself, but the reality is different,” she told lawmakers. “Most clients are wealthy, out-of-state visitors who can afford to pay thousands of dollars per session.”
Groups in support of the legislation include the Washington Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Washington Defender Association and the Washington Retail Association.
Mark Johnson, senior vice president of policy and government affairs for the Washington Retail Association, said the group supports the measure because it believes the reform could help improve public safety.
“Oftentimes the individuals that are committing retail theft in our establishments are under the influence of substances or suffering from a mental illness, or oftentimes both,” he said. “If these treatments can help those individuals treat their mental illness, their substance abuse or both, we are strongly supporting of that.”
“Locking them up in an institution or taking them to a medical facility is not helping them,” he added, “and it’s not helping our communities become safer places.”
The legislation’s Senate sponsor, Sen. Jesse Salomon (D) noted at a Senate Health and Long-Term Care Committee hearing on Thursday that he initially introduced a proposal to expand access to psilocybin-assisted care at the beginning of 2022.
“We were told by psychiatrists, medical professionals, MDs that the research into psilocybin is promising, but we should wait,” he said. “And, mind you, we’ve already had hundreds of studies, academic studies—all of them show promise.”
“Since I introduced the bill, approximately 24,000 veterans have committed suicide,” he told colleagues. “And I’m not saying this would change every one of those, but it would have changed some. So that is the cost of waiting until we get a little more proof.”
Rep. Nicole Macri (D), the House sponsor, acknowledged criticisms from those who called the proposed system over-regulated, but she nevertheless described her bill as progress.
“I know many people would like for us to take a bigger step forward in legalizing novel therapeutics, like psilocybin,” she said at a hearing on Wednesday of the House Health Care and Wellness Committee. “I think this is a thoughtful step in the right direction.”
In addition to hearing testimony, lawmakers also heard a summary of changes made in a substitute version of the legislation. The revised proposal includes a number of changes, according to a legislative summary. Most notably, it replaces references to “psychedelic substances” with “psilocybin,” and removes a provision that would have authorized the state’s Department of Health to begin allowing the use of other psychedelic substances after December 31, 2029.
The substitute bill would also limit services to the use of naturally occurring products, such as dried mushrooms or mushroom powder. Synthetic psilocybin and analogs would not be allowed. Products could, however, be prepared in ways to make administration more palatable, for example by making mushroom tea or serving food or beverages alongside the products.
Notably, the substitute also specifies that the state law would not preclude or supersede municipal ordinances that decriminalize psilocybin or deprioritize local enforcement of laws against the substance.
Another change would let regulators at the Washington State Liquor Control Board limit the number of licenses for cultivators and testing laboratories so long as there are at least 20 licenses of each type available in various regions across the state.
Lawmakers at Thursday’s Senate committee hearing also heard another bill, SB 5204, that would require the University of Washington to conduct a three-year randomized study into the use of ibogaine-assisted therapy as a treatment for opioid use disorder. The study would need to be conducted at a licensed clinic in Mexico.
The committees took no action on either the psilocybin or ibogaine bills beyond taking public testimony.
Outside the legislature, organizers at REACH Washington are separately working to put a measure on the state’s ballot that would legalize a number of plant- and fungi-based psychedelics for personal use, including psilocybin mushrooms, mescaline and DMT.
While the proposal wouldn’t allow commercial sales of the substances, it would permit paid “supportive services” under which people could receive compensation for facilitating psychedelic experiences. Individual adults could also freely grow psychedelic plants and fungi and share them with other adults without remuneration.
REACH submitted the measure to the secretary of state last year, and the office granted it a formal ballot title and summary in June.
Meanwhile, legislative committees last week gave initial hearings to a handful of marijuana-related bills, including proposals that would allow direct-to-consumer sales by licensed cannabis growers and finally end the state’s felony criminalization of home cultivation.
Washington was one of the first two U.S. states to legalize adult-use marijuana, with voters approving Initiative 502 in 2012. Unlike most other jurisdictions to have adopted the reform since then, however, the state forbids home cultivation of cannabis for personal use—classifying it as a felony offense—and bars vertical integration within the commercial industry.
Legislative efforts to allow personal marijuana cultivation stretch back to at least 2015, but so far each has failed. Currently, only state-registered medical marijuana patients may legally cultivate the plant.
Legislative committees in Washington State heard testimony last week on a plan to create a regulated system of legal psilocybin services aimed at promoting mental health and wellness. But while some commenters said they supported the proposal, most opposed it as either too lenient or, conversely, too restrictive. Drafters of the bills, SB 5201 and Read More
