Seizures of psilocybin mushrooms (“magic mushrooms”) by law enforcement rose in Oregon and across the country from 2017 to 2022, according to a study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Why it matters: While a regulated market for psychedelic fungi exists in Oregon, police are still targeting the black market of recreational users. By the…
“Our coalition opposes creating a model based on Oregon,” says James Davis, Bay Staters executive director and co-founder. “It is still highly illegal to possess and grow psychedelics outside of regulated use in Oregon, and Measure 109 did nothing to change that.” “Measure 109 established a highly regulated market for psilocybin services – too regulated,…
Oregon’s political leaders themselves played central roles in failing to deliver on the potential for law enforcement to connect people with lifesaving services under the new measure, documents and interviews with a wide array of people involved in the system indicate. The Legislature, the court system and the bureaucracy under two governors ignored or rejected…
Grant Hartley, the Multnomah County director of Metropolitan Public Defenders, predicted the new citations [built into HB 4002] would overload the system. His office is already short-staffed, with public defenders averaging 100 cases apiece, he said. “We have a humanitarian crisis,” Hartley said. “It’s embarrassing to see people out on the street. But injecting thousands…
It would be one thing if arguments against the decriminalization of psychedelics were being made. But that’s not the case. Instead, the lumping together of psychedelics and opioids seems to have gone largely unnoticed, setting up personal use of psychedelics to become an unintended casualty of Oregon’s opioid crisis. By treating all drugs as an…
Backers of Oregon’s psychedelic mushroom law made big promises when they pitched Measure 109 to voters in 2020. Oregonians would get access to a life-changing compound in a safe, legal setting, and, after a two-year startup period, it wouldn’t cost taxpayers a dime. But two years have come and gone, and Oregon Psilocybin Services is…
As is often the case when it comes to drug topics, emotions have taken precedence over facts. Not only is it inaccurate to say that Measure 110 failed, but we actually can say after a century of opioid prohibition in the U.S. that drug criminalization has not worked to make anything better. It is true…
…features of the current bill that the lawmaker said her amendment removes would have explicitly required the task force to make recommendations “for the sale and taxation of natural psychedelic substances.” …establish a “Task Force on Responsible Use of Natural Psychedelic Substances” that would be overseen by the Maryland Cannabis Administration (MCA). Originally, the “Task…
The Oregon experiment was unique in America, where on any given day 350,000 people – roughly the equivalent of the population of Cleveland – are locked up on drug offenses, and drug-possession arrests occur at a clip of one every 23 seconds… three years later, Measure 110 now stands as a cautionary tale about the failure to match…
Shouts of “For justice, for justice!” and “We won’t go back to the war on drugs!” permeated the state Capitol Saturday [3/2/2024] afternoon… Republican Senator Tim Knopp added that the goal of the bill is not to go back to the war on drugs. “The war on drugs decades ago disenfranchised minority communities,” he said.…
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