Mushroom legalization in Colorado gains both political and legal support
*The power of psychedelics is that they can reveal, in the span of a few hours, depths of awe and understanding that can otherwise elude us for a lifetime. —Sam Harris
*About 20 million Americans have done mushrooms. And the Global Drug Survey says mushrooms carry the lowest physical risk of any recreational drug.
“I’m not aware of anything in Colorado law that would differentiate between cannabis and psilocybin mushrooms,” Noah Potter said. “It’s opening an entirely new door.”
The initiative doesn’t just say “shrooms are legal.” Instead, it mimics a 2007 Denver law that declared that cannabis should be the “lowest law enforcement priority” for cops, which effectively decriminalized cannabis in the city. The initiative also says that city funds couldn’t be used to prosecute people for shrooms — another tactic borrowed from cannabis law. “The idea was, let’s look at what’s been done in cannabis,” said Noah Potter, a psychedelic drug policy consultant and lawyer with Hoban Law Group, a cannabis firm. Potter helped craft the mushroom initiative along with activists and mushroom lovers, and with lawyers from Vicente Sederberg, one of the nation’s most prominent cannabis firms … A small handful of politicians are willing to openly support this decriminalization … The enthusiasm signals a growing hope not just for an obscure [fungi] in a mid-sized city in the middle of the country, but of larger ideas: that the early, promising studies showing psilocybin helps depression and addiction could be investigated. That microdosing could be legally and openly explored. And that cannabis might not be the only drug freed at the ballot box, city by city, maybe neighborhood by neighborhood.
Original Article (The Rooster):
Mushroom legalization in Colorado gains both political and legal support
Artwork Fair Use: Comhar
