Massachusetts weighs the… future of… psychedelics…
In Massachusetts… there would be… protections for underground trippers… as in Colorado… [but unlike Oregon’s M109 which doesn’t protect personal cultivation or sharing of psilocybe mushrooms ] no one would be arrested for growing and sharing a reasonable amount of mushrooms. New Approach [PAC] may pour millions into a sophisticated campaign. The state could erect a complex regulatory structure. But ultimately, James Davis suggests, the public will turn to something modest and intimate – a sort of aboveground version of the present-day underground. “I think that’s the model that wins.”
James Davis says this grassroots effort is the real story of psychedelic activism in Massachusetts, and he bristles at all the talk of New Approach and its ballot measure. The group swooped in and tried to impose its own vision with little regard for all the work local advocates have already done, he says. Bay Stater’s for Natural Medicine, the central organizing force in Massachusetts’ grassroots decriminalization movement… group has claimed some impressive victories at the municipal level – starting in Somerville, where the city council passed a resolution in January 2021 directing local police to make the enforcement of laws against the cultivation and possession of plant-based psychedelics a low priority. Similar wins followed in Cambridge, Northampton, Easthampton, Amherst, and Salem. Consumers, he predicts, will be turned off by high prices. And when they start looking for alternatives, they’ll discover how easy it is to grow magic mushrooms on their own. How special it is to share them.
Original Article (Boston Globe):
Massachusetts weighs the legalization of psychedelics — and the future of tripping
Artwork Fair Use: TUBS
