Category: The Psychedelic News

A doctor and a psychologist say Health Canada’s move to allow physicians to request restricted psychedelic drugs for patients as part of their psychotherapy is a positive step toward transforming mental-health care.

But they say the recent change to the Special Access Program isn’t enough.

“We still have a huge amount of work to do because these medicines could really, really revolutionize the entire mental health-care field,” said Dr. Michael Verbora, who works as a medical director at the Field Trip Health therapy centre in Toronto.

“I don’t want to get too far ahead of where the science is … but I do really, really believe that if people have a process to start their own healing, it can lead to a much better world for most people.”

Psychedelic assisted therapy involves ingesting consciousness-altering substances — including psilocybin, ketamine, LSD or MDMA (the active ingredient in ecstasy) — in a clinical setting as part of more traditional psychotherapy.

Health Canada has said requests will be considered on a case-by-case basis for a “serious or life-threatening condition” and where other conventional treatments have failed, are unsuitable for the patient or are not available in Canada.

Verbora said the change isn’t designed to have a wait list, because it’s meant for emergencies. Health Canada has said applications will be processed within two days, but it’s unclear when a decision would be made.

What it has done is streamline potential access to restricted drugs, Verbora said.

“Unfortunately, if you have a terminal illness, you don’t have much life left in you. You don’t have time to apply to the government and wait months to get an exemption.”

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Edmonton-based psychologist Brian Welling calls the approach “revolutionary.”

“This is the greatest leap forward in mental-health care since the invention of psychotherapy,” he said.

“I’ve used psychedelics many, many times. I didn’t have a serious or life-threatening condition, but for my own personal problems and part of my own spiritual journey, these experiences have been life-changing.

Verbora, who filed his first application on behalf of a patient this week, said one of the biggest challenges is that more physicians need education on psychedelic therapy.

“The responsibility really falls on the physician to do all the paperwork, which is like to write 100 prescriptions in the time that I do one of these applications,” he said. ”Then I’ll have to access the drug. I’ll have to store the drug. I’ll have to educate the patient on the drug.“

Ronan Levy, co-founder of Field Trip Health, said most applications except the most severe will probably be rejected.

He said he hopes Health Canada’s criteria for approval of psychedelics expand in the future.

The government has said the regulatory amendment does not signal “an intent towards the decriminalization or legalization of restricted drugs.”

However, that conversation needs to start, said Verbora.

“We have a long way to go to help the millions of people around the world that unfortunately suffer from mental-health issues and (their) growing burden.”

All three men suggest that can happen by removing the stigma around psychedelics.

“When done in the right circumstances, with the proper oversight, with trained clinicians who can support the experience, the outcomes can be fantastic,” Levy said.

“That leads to people who have greater emotional resilience, people who are more able to adapt to circumstances like a global pandemic.”

Longform

Like most working parents, Marissa has a lot to juggle — kids, her job as a nutritionist, her home outside of Philadelphia. And then there are the in-laws.

“I call my husband’s family a clan because there’s always somebody celebrating something or having a gathering,” she explains. That can be hard on her — she doesn’t feel the need to spend every weekend or even a full day hanging out with her husband’s extended family. “I would get anxious and bitchy,” she says of those long family sessions, and she’d be ready to go almost as soon as she arrived.

To deal, Marissa — who like most people in this story asked that we change her name for privacy’s sake — has found an unconventional solution, one that’s increasingly popular in both the Philadelphia region and the medical community.

When she’s feeling stressed or anticipating a big day with the family, Marissa takes a small nibble of a dried psilocybin mushroom and goes about her day. She’s one of many people turning to psychedelic drugs — to help manage stress, trauma and, yes, family. Some people, like Marissa, take small doses based on their own internet research, while others take larger doses in more formal settings. All of them say the experience provides them with relief they couldn’t find anywhere else.

“Having kids was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Marissa, the mom of two daughters, explains. “I’m kind of joking, but microdosing helps me be the mom that I want to be.”

•

In another time, not that long ago, partaking in psychedelic drugs was for hippies and free spirits — a small slice of the population in a city as big as Philadelphia. But with the resurgence and endorsement in popular culture of drugs like MDMA, psilocybin, ketamine and LSD, what only recently seemed countercultural is suddenly becoming mainstream.

The growing national psychedelic movement has been spurred on by mainstream writers like Michael Pollan, documentaries on Netflix, and larger political shifts, like the legalization of marijuana in 18 states and D.C. In the past few years, psychedelics have broken through to an audience of buttoned-up skeptics as a potential treatment for all kinds of things — from PTSD to depression to anxiety and more. From underground guided mushroom trips to ketamine-assisted psychotherapy sessions to clinical trials for therapy-assisted MDMA treatments, all with a range of intents and goals, the psychedelic movement is growing at an exponential pace.

No place is more primed for this latest wave of mind expansion than Philly, where doctors, lawyers, parents, teachers, and everyone in between is turning to psychedelics as a means to process whatever the hell happened these past few years. After a seemingly endless pandemic marked by trauma and loss, more people than ever are seeking help in the form of plant medicine in the City of Brotherly Love.

When Marissa attended Drexel in the ’90s, she considered so-called “magic mushrooms” a recreational drug, one she’d take maybe once a year, the way her friends would occasionally indulge in ketamine at raves. But that was a long time ago. Back then, she never heard about anyone doing drugs to heal from trauma or deal with life’s daily stresses. “It was just something people did for fun — there was no therapeutic effect to it,” she says.

Being a mom, though, was extremely challenging. Through some online research, she learned about microdosing, an informal practice whereby you take a small dose of a psychedelic — typically psilocybin mushrooms, frequently powdered and stored in capsules — every few days. She hoped it might help her deal with the stress of parenthood and family life.

A hemp grower in Pennsylvania steered her to someone who was growing magic mushrooms and selling them in a professionally sealed bag — “It’s the first time I didn’t get them in a rolled-up plastic baggie” — for between $200 and $250 an ounce, about a month’s supply.

Marissa says she doesn’t notice physical effects, like the stereotypical walls melting or bright colors or hallucinations you see characters experience in movies. But the emotional impacts on her have been huge. “I have found the biggest effect for this microdosing has been on my patience with my family and my daughters,” she says.

She’s noticed a ripple effect, too: “If I have more patience, then my husband is much more patient with me, and that enhances our relationship, which means I can be more present with my daughters.”

•

Other local residents are using microdosing to seek relief from even bigger issues. Paul, a 34-year-old nursing student in Philly, was grieving after his brother died by suicide last year. To deal with the trauma, he and his mom, both in deep pain, explored talk therapy. But they couldn’t find an affordable option. “I was looking for other alternatives that weren’t dangerous,” Paul says.

First, he turned to marijuana, but he found it made him sleepy, and he would snack too much. “One of my friends was telling me about microdosing with ’shrooms,” he recalls. It sounded good to him, so he asked the person he bought weed from if she had mushrooms. What do you know? She did.

He ground up a small amount of mushrooms, put the powder in capsules, and would take one once a day or every other day. “There’s not much information out there on how much to take,” he says, so he just poked around online and dosed himself.

In four or five months of microdosing, Paul says, he’s noticed “a complete change in my mind. My anxiety has subsided significantly. I feel like the best version of myself. I obviously still have moments of anxiety. It’s not like I’m completely cured. But I feel much better in general.”

Paul’s partner tells him he’s become a much more polite person since starting his microdosing. “Just because of the traumatic stress that I’ve been going through, it’s hard for me to be nice,” he says. “There’s always something going on, and this made me more patient.”

While microdosing can feel like a less intimidating way to test the efficacy of psychedelics for mental health, it’s only one of many options people are seeking, and in more legitimate medical settings, it has its detractors. Hannah McLane, one of the leaders of Philly’s movement toward greater access to psychedelic drugs and the founder and executive director of SoundMind, the first psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy treatment center in Philly, says the idea of microdosing a psychedelic every few days can miss the larger intention of the medicine. If we want to heal from trauma and move forward from emotional struggles, she says, small daily doses won’t necessarily achieve that goal.

“Microdosing isn’t particularly innovative; it’s just what people are used to,” McLane says — a way to make the larger treatment more palatable to the masses. Since microdosing can feel similar to taking an antidepressant or anxiety med every day — just more natural, so to speak — there’s a risk that psychedelic medicine could become just one more pharmaceutical intervention, a pattern that many in the psychedelic movement hope to avoid. “Higher doses sound a little bit scary, and everyone’s afraid they’re going to run down the street naked. And it’s like, no, the scary part is actually where the healing comes,” says McLane. “You have to go into the part of your mind that you didn’t go into before.”

•

Research on microdosing mushrooms is limited, and though there are more in-depth studies on the benefits of longer, more dedicated psilocybin trips for treatment-resistant depression and PTSD — many of them conducted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research — the drug’s status as a Schedule 1 drug, which means the FDA classifies it as having a high potential for abuse, makes studying its short- and long-term effects difficult. But change may be coming: In November of 2020, Oregon became the first state to legalize psilocybin for anyone over the age of 21, with a few caveats. To gain access to the drug, you must pass a screening test, and it must be administered in a licensed facility.

This change follows the FDA approval of esketamine, a ketamine nasal spray, for treatment-resistant depression. Since then, ketamine clinics have popped up everywhere, and savvy entrepreneurs have, unsurprisingly, built Silicon Valley start-ups with fancy websites and silly names like Mindbloom and Field Trip to capitalize on the movement. Fittingly, Philadelphia’s ketamine-assisted therapy clinic is a little less corporate and more down-to-earth, located in the heart of West Philly.

“I think Philly is special,” says the SoundMind Center’s McLane. “We have a history of innovation and art, and, you know, we’re the original capital of the country.” For Philly to be the next spot where people feel safe using psychedelics to explore trauma and pain makes sense, McLane says: “If you want a place that is a snapshot of American culture — the good and bad parts about American culture all contained within one little city? It’s Philly.”

The SoundMind Center looks like a lot of other houses in West Philly. It’s one half of a twin, with a big front porch and austere pillars in that classic brown. But at the treatment center where McLane, a physician and psychotherapist who trained at Penn, Temple, Harvard and Brown, is running the show, there’s a lot going on behind those doors that looks like nothing else in the city.

SoundMind is a psychedelic healing center and educational facility where patients experiencing debilitating symptoms impacting their mental health, like depression, anxiety and PTSD, can sit with a trained therapist during a ­ketamine-assisted psychotherapy session. Ketamine — ­technically the same ketamine that Marissa’s club friends would do in the ’90s — has been legal as an anesthetic for more than 50 years, but only in the past decade has research been done on its potential benefits for mental health. Ketamine produces short trips — between 45 and 90 minutes — so it’s an easier sell than using mushrooms or other psychedelics for a traditional medical community that’s only just dipping its toes into administering psychedelic medicine.

Ketamine isn’t McLane’s first choice of drug to work with, but it’s the one she’s got right now. While psilocybin has been legalized in Oregon and MDMA-assisted therapies are in trial stages for specific conditions like deep trauma and PTSD in other states, she anticipates it could be several years before the latter is approved for the same kinds of treatment that ketamine is.

There are more than 600 people on the SoundMind wait list, all hoping to see whether psychedelics can alleviate their depression, anxiety and/or PTSD. Many of them suffer from trauma caused by the pandemic. Out of all the treatment options, McLane is most excited by the promise of MDMA.

“What MDMA does is circumvent the amygdala, which is the fear center in the brain,” she explains. “So you’re essentially able to engage with a trauma memory or a difficult memory without dissociating. And that is the way you can heal.” In clinical trials for MDMA-assisted therapy, patients sit for eight hours, typically wearing an eye mask and listening to music, with two therapists who check in while the patients talk about what they are experiencing and feeling. (MDMA is a very talkative drug, so that inevitably happens quickly.)

“The gold standard for therapists working in trauma is prolonged exposure therapy, in which you’re asking someone to tell the trauma over and over again,” McLane says. “And they have about a 40 percent dropout rate, because it’s really uncomfortable.” In MDMA-assisted therapy, patients establish an intention (like processing a difficult life event or unshakable emotion) beforehand and allow that subject to naturally come up during the trip, then are usually better able to engage with feelings than they would be in traditional therapy. “Sometimes it comes up two hours in or four hours in,” McLane says. “You can’t always predict how someone’s going to get to the difficult memory. Sometimes it seems like a totally random other story.” Because of this, McLane says, the patient is “able to stay present, go into the memory, and feel it.”

Then comes the integration.

You’ll find people in the psychedelic community use the word “integration” a lot. In a more clinical setting, the term can describe the sessions that follow a psychedelic-assisted trip, during which clinicians have their patients sit and talk through what they learned on their journeys.

Natalie Ginsberg, the director of policy and advocacy at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, explains it to me in meme form over the phone before texting me an image: a withered man walking through a tunnel, looking sad and dejected. “I should sit with more medicine,” he thinks. A great dark shadow is crawling behind him with a pained look on its face, begging, “Bro, fucking integrate me.” The point: Taking psychedelic medicine may be the exciting or thrilling part, but actually putting that learning into practice on a day-to-day basis isn’t always easy.

Using psychedelics to deal with traumatic experiences, whether the death of a loved one or the anxieties of parenting — or even to get in touch with a deeper sense of self — isn’t new. But access to both formal and informal networks that guide people in their use and thus help them disinvest from the traditional pharmaceutical industry is growing. The Philadelphia Psychedelic Society currently has a wait list in the hundreds of people eager to be led on a psychedelic trip by a trained facilitator.

At the same time, those in the movement are aware that the treatments are less accessible to those in the region who might need them most. “Black, Indigenous, people of color, LGBTQIA-plus people, those who are neurodiverse — we all experience higher rates of mental illness yet have lower access to care,” says Aubrey Howard, BIPOC protocol coordinator at SoundMind, which seeks to make these therapies more available to traditionally marginalized communities. “There is definitely a barrier to entry for people of color when talking about wellness or holistic medicine or psychedelic medicine.” In other words, according to Natalie Ginsberg: “It’s generally much safer for white folks to speak publicly about drugs and drug use.” (Not to mention to use. People of color are still criminalized more often for drug use, and by extension, trust levels around these supposedly wonderful natural, still largely illegal medicines are low in marginalized communities.)

If this movement is going to succeed, Howard says, there has to be access for all, not just for those who have the time, space and money to get in touch with their inner selves for a day. “I feel that these medicines have immense potential to be agents of change in America and over all the world,” Howard says. “We don’t want to see the same thing happen with psychedelics that happened with the cannabis movement, where it’s a very small group of people, probably white, probably wealthy, who are the ones given access.”

Until a wider range of psychedelics becomes available in formal settings, there are those who are experimenting informally. Laura, a bodywork teacher in Kensington, was at the beach in the summer of 2020 when she took mushrooms for the first time since high school — not a microdose to take the edge off with her kids, but a full six-hour dose with a few friends. She hadn’t been around a lot of people since COVID, and she was able to take some time away from her six-year-old and her husband to see what the recent attention to psychedelics was all about.

“It was an intensification of a time that was already really intense,” Laura recalls.

After her trip (both physical and metaphysical) to the beach, Laura says, she sensed herself closing off: “I felt frickin’ fried. I was exhausted. That was a whole darn lot. I think sometimes it can be an ongoing enlivening, and sometimes it can be letting in a little bit more than my nervous system can handle.”

But that’s all part of the process, she says. And she’ll definitely be taking a trip again. “I think psychedelics can help us make more contact and peace inside ourselves so that we can have more contact and peace with our kids,” she says. Even though she’s not planning on doing mushrooms more than once a year, she sees the practice as a potential annual event. The substance could help heal some of our “collective deep trauma around COVID,” she says.

Of the dozens of people I spoke to for this story, almost all were kind and open, speaking of their experiences with psychedelics in almost mythically positive ways. The reasons they got into doing psychedelics were all different: stress relief, childhood trauma, depression, grief, for fun, to relax. There were people whose experiences were challenging, others who took psychedelics daily, still others who were working within a more formal framework — like the ones SoundMind is working to further popularize — by taking the drugs alongside psychotherapy once and never again.

The connecting factor among them all: Nothing else had worked or had been nearly as effective in delivering what they were searching for.

“It’s hard to explain in words,” one frequent psilocybin user, who had repressed memories of his childhood trauma, tells me. “The body remembers,” he says, so in his 30s, memories started to come back to him. “Microdosing helped me put language to a lot of those experiences that I would have trouble remembering,” he says. “It definitely helps on the day-to-day in creating new neurological pathways, opening up past wounds that are subconscious.”

But it’s not only been helpful for dealing with deeper trauma. Sometimes, it’s just what he needs to feel lighter, to lift some of the heaviness his past has pushed onto him: “At this point in time, with how my life has been going, I’ve never felt better in my entire life.”

Meanwhile, Laura, who first reexperienced psychedelics on that beach two summers ago, has seen them used more frequently among her group of parents. When she and her friends get a chance to step away from parenting duty, they’ll do psychedelics together, as a “getaway.” She’s especially appreciative of how mushrooms have affected her husband’s parenting: “I have seen him able to connect with our kid in a way that seems more expansive, having more presence,” she says.

“There’s an articulation and a brightening” that happens while she’s on mushrooms, Laura explains, and that clarity and liveliness help her interpret things in ways she never thought to before. “I really honor the wisdom of psychedelic mushrooms and want that to be an ongoing current in my life,” she says, adding that she hopes the psychedelics trend will continue to grow: “It happening anywhere would be good for everywhere. But if it did happen here, I would feel a little more Philly pride.”

The Dosing DL

Get to know the four drugs in the current psychedelic movement.

Magic mushrooms

Can help with: Depression, lulls of creativity

In supervised settings, these natural hallucinogens are now considered some of the safest psychedelics. Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine found psilocybin—the chemical compound in magic mushrooms—helped relieve major depression in patients, while social users say they feel more creative, solution-savvy and self-reflective.

LSD

Can help with: Enhancing mood and productivity

Aside from inspiring Steve Jobs to create Apple’s minimalist designs, LSD microdosing is said to have antidepressant-like qualities, elevating mood and catalyzing feelings of bliss without totally altering the senses the way higher doses often do. Users also claim the drug helps boost their focus, productivity and energy levels.

MDMa

Can help with: PTSD, social interaction

MDMA, or Ecstasy, can help folks open up to and connect with others and ease social anxiety, especially for adults living with autism, according to Matthew Johnson, a psychedelics researcher and scientist. When combined with psychotherapy, the drug has been reported
to assist those with PTSD in revisiting and processing traumatic experiences without becoming fearful or emotionally overwhelmed.

Ketamine

Can help with: Treatment- resistant depression, general perspective-shifting

Hannah McLane, of SoundMind in West Philly, says ketamine prompts a kind of disassociation that can help folks “gain perspective of their lives” and work through anxiety or trauma more objectively. In 2019, the FDA approved a version of ketamine for treatment-resistant depression, and a wearable ketamine pump intended to fight opioid addiction will soon head to clinical trials. —Laura Bryzski

For more on Philly’s Psychedelic revolution, check out these articles on the benefits of microdosing THC and the legalization of psychedelics in Pennsylvania.

Published as “Philadelphia’s Psychedelic Revolution” in the January 2022 issue of Philadelphia magazine.

Pa. Could Legalize Psychedelics Much More Quickly Than it Did Marijuana – Philadelphia Magazine

With their beautiful blue trumpet bells unfurling to greet the sun, the morning glory adds a splash of color to the start of your day. 

Its seeds, however, may do a bit more than that — new research has found that, thanks to a symbiotic relationship with a fungus, this common flower may be a source for new psychedelic drugs.

The flower-fungus relationship can lead to the creation of compounds called ergot alkaloids. Ergot alkaloids have been used to treat Parkinson’s disease and brutally painful migraine and cluster headaches for decades. But they’re also closely related to LSD.

Examining the seeds of morning glories taken from collections around the globe, researchers from Tulane, Indiana University, and West Virginia University found that a quarter of the 210 morning glory species they examined had some form of ergot alkaloid in their seeds.

“We have known a lot about the fungal alkaloid chemistry and its effects on the mind and body for [a] long time,” Tulane plant and fungal biologist Keith Clay said. 

This new study is the first to show just how intermingled morning glory and egot evolution is — a relationship that is “manifested by different mixtures and concentrations of ergot alkaloids across the morning glory evolutionary tree.”

New research has found that, thanks to a symbiotic relationship with a fungus, the common flower may be a source of new psychedelic compounds called ergot alkaloids.

A symbiotic relationship: A deal that benefits both partners of two different species is known as symbiotic. 

In some cases, that symbiotic relationship can be encoded in evolution, the authors explain in their study, published in Communications Biology. Organisms that help another one out may get a leg up in the reproduction game, like wasps who harbor bacteria that produce compounds which help fight off infection in their larvae — larvae that have inherited the microbial symbiote from their mother.

Some plants have a similar relationship with fungi. In certain grasses, the ergot fungus — cause of Saint Anthony’s Fire — creates ergot alkaloids that don’t stay contained in the fungus’s thready, root-like structures, but can actually be passed down in the seeds. 

These ergot alkaloids make the plants less fun to eat, and everybody wins.

Some species of morning glory have forged a similar relationship. The ergot alkaloids contained in their seeds “have been of longstanding interest given their toxic effects on humans and animals, medical applications and psychoactive properties,” the researchers wrote. 

One ergot alkaloid, lysergic acid, is particularly famous: it’s the inspiration behind LSD, a synthetic derivative.

Ergot alkaloids inspired LSD, and treat migraines and Parkinson’s.

New potential: Naturally occurring ergot alkaloid compounds have long been used among Indigenous American communities for their mental and physical effects. 

Finding a trove of new ergot alkaloid compounds means potential for new psychedelics, which in turn may end up being useful as mental health therapies or perhaps anti-inflammatories.

The new compounds may have uses beyond the psychedelic. Currently, ergot alkaloids’ potential to constrict the blood vessels around the head also make them cluster and migraine headache medications, while their ability to goose nerve cells in a way similar to dopamine means they can be used as a treatment for Parkinson’s.

The researchers reported 36 new ergot alkaloid compounds, suggesting to them that even more examples of the symbiosis will be uncovered with continuing research.

We’d love to hear from you! If you have a comment about this article or if you have a tip for a future Freethink story, please email us at tips@freethink.com.

MS Senate passes medical marijuana; DE legal cannabis bill filed; New OH legalization signatures; MO GOP psychedelics bill

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/ TOP THINGS TO KNOW

The Mississippi Senate voted to legalize medical cannabis despite Gov. Tate Reeves’s (R) veto threat over patient possession limits he thinks are too high. The measure now heads to the House.

Marijuana Moment’s latest analysis looks at the large number of states that are poised to legalize cannabis—and potentially psychedelics—in 2022. Between ballot initiatives and bills in legislatures, advocates see a lot of targets for advancement this year.

Ohio activists say they are “confident” they’ve collected enough signatures to force lawmakers to consider a marijuana legalization measure.  An earlier submission was deemed insufficient but they’ve now turned in nearly 30,000 more signatures.

Delaware lawmakers introduced a newly revised marijuana legalization bill that includes key changes to equity provisions meant to help ensure it gets the supermajority level of support needed to pass.

A Missouri Republican representative filed a bill to allow patients with debilitating, life-threatening or terminal illnesses to use psychedelics like MDMA, DMT, ibogaine, LSD, mescaline, peyote and psilocybin under the state’s right-to-try law.

/ FEDERAL

The U.S. Sentencing Commission published a report on recidivism by people released from prison after serving time for drug trafficking convictions.

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) tweeted, “The criminalization of cannabis has resulted in discrimination and injustice. Moreover, it has destroyed countless Black and Brown lives. It’s long past time for the federal government to catch up and move our country forward by leading on cannabis reform.”

Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) tweeted about a study showing cannabinoids can protect cells from COVID, saying, “As if we needed another reason to legalize it.”

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) spoke about growing Republican support for marijuana reform.

Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-CA) tweeted, “January is Human Trafficking Prevention Month. With cases of human trafficking linked to illegal marijuana cultivation sites rising in our community, it is critical we put an end to this modern-day slavery.”

Wisconsin Democratic Senate candidate Gillian Battino tweeted. “When I am in the Senate, I will fight to legalize recreational marijuana. We can invest tax revenues in communities torn apart by the war on drugs, farmers can diversify with sustainable practices, and patients will have the access they require.”

Texas Democratic congressional candidate Arthur DIxon tweeted, “Rich white business owners profit $100+ Billions Dollars from the cannabis industry every year while here in Texas thousands of black and brown kids get thrown into prison for possessing a few grams… We have to do better! It’s time to legalize marijuana! 🪴”

Kentucky Democratic congressional candidate William Compton tweeted, “One thing I would want to do in congress is make sure Marijuana is legalized nationwide. A majority of people support it! It’s a no brainer.”

/ STATES

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam touted his signing a marijuana legalization bill in his final State of the Commonwealth speech,

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) pardoned more people for marijuana and drug convictions.

California’s attorney general continued to criticize local officials’ slowness to clear marijuana convictions as required by a law he authored.

South Carolina’s Senate majority leader said it’s “time to have the debate” on a long-pending medical cannabis bill, and the House minority leader said it should have been done a long time ago.

The chairman of the Louisiana legislature’s Medical Marijuana Commission said it’s time to expand the medical cannabis program “in every direction.”

Florida Democratic lawmakers held a press conference to promote marijuana legalization bills.

Kansas House Democrats tweeted, “Kansas is 1 of 4 states where marijuana remains fully illegal. It’s 2021. This is unacceptable.”

A Missouri Republican representative discussed plans to file a marijuana legalization bill.

Maine regulators proposed medical cannabis rules changes.

New York regulators proposed emergency hemp rules.

Nevada regulators are conducting a survey to collect demographic data on the cannabis industry.

Illinois officials are hiring reviewers for grant applications for the marijuana revenue-funded  Restore, Reinvest, and Renew grant program.

Pennsylvania regulators tweeted about eggs from hemp-fed chickens, saying, “Eating hemp eggs will not get you high, but you will be filled with a healthier egg.”

—
Marijuana Moment is already tracking more than 900 cannabis, psychedelics and drug policy bills in state legislatures and Congress this year. Patreon supporters pledging at least $25/month get access to our interactive maps, charts and hearing calendar so they don’t miss any developments.

Learn more about our marijuana bill tracker and become a supporter on Patreon to get access.
—

/ LOCAL

Denver, Colorado officials sent guidance on marijuana hospitality and unlicensed consumption businesses.

/ INTERNATIONAL

Costa Rican lawmakers sent President Carlos Alvarado a medical cannabis and hemp bill.

Grenada Prime Minister Dr Keith Mitchell said his government will introduce a medical cannabis bill ahead of the next election.

The French Assembly debated a marijuana legalization bill.

UK members of Parliament sent a letter asking London’s mayor to rescind a plan to reduce marijuana arrests.

/ SCIENCE & HEALTH

A study concluded that “consumers are interested in and are using [medical cannabis products] for dermatologic indications, most commonly for inflammatory skin disorders.”

A study demonstrated that “treatment with three infusions of ketamine was well tolerated in patients with alcohol use disorder and was associated with more days of abstinence from alcohol at 6-month follow-up.”

/ ADVOCACY, OPINION & ANALYSIS

The Michael J. Fox Foundation’s senior vice president for public policy joined the board of the Council for Federal Cannabis Regulation.

Supernova Women organized a rally at the California Capitol calling for tax and regulatory relief for marijuana businesses.

/ BUSINESS

Eaze opened its first dispensary storefronts.

Vangst completed a $19 million Series B funding round.

Charlotte’s Web Holdings, Inc. completed an organizational restructuring.

Canopy Growth USA is being sued over claims that its website violates the Americans with Disabilities Act by being inaccessible to visually impaired and blind customers.

Leafly has a new senior vice president of engineering.

/ CULTURE

Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert joked about a study showing cannabinoids can protect cells from COVID,

The Onion joked about rising COVID vaccine appointments in Quebec, Canada after officials made the shots mandatory to access marijuana and liquor stores.

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Photo courtesy of Chris Wallis/Side Pocket Images.

Advocates scored a significant number of marijuana reform victories in state legislatures in 2021, but they’re hopeful they can get even more accomplished in the new year.

In states across the country, activists are already in the process of qualifying cannabis legalization and other drug policy reform measures for November 2022 ballots as lawmakers separately work to advance reform bills.

“I am optimistic 2022 will break the record for the most cannabis legalization laws enacted in a single year—a record that was set just last year,” Karen O’Keefe, director of state policies for the Marijuana Policy Project, told Marijuana Moment. “Several states also appear poised to enact compassionate medical cannabis laws.”

And the reform movement is poised to make gains beyond just cannabis this year, with several proposals to legalize or decriminalize psychedelics and other drugs also gaining momentum.

Here’s a rundown of which states are most likely to enact broad cannabis or psychedelics reform in 2022: 

Arkansas

There are three campaigns working to give voters a say in whether Arkansas should legalize marijuana in 2022.

The most recent one to throw their hat in the ring was Arkansans for Marijuana Reform, which filed their reform initiative with the state in November.

Also last year, a former Arkansas lawmaker announced a campaign that also intends to put cannabis legalization on the state’s 2022 ballot. Eddie Armstrong, a Democrat who previously served as minority leader in the state House of Representatives before leaving office in 2019, is chairing the newly formed advocacy group Responsible Growth Arkansas.

A separate group of activists with Arkansas True Grass is already in the signature gathering process for a 2022 ballot initiative that would create a system of regulated sales for adults 21 and older, allowing them to purchase up to four ounces of cannabis and grow up to 12 plants for personal use.

Both True Grass and Arkansans for Marijuana Reform attempted to place marijuana legalization initiatives on the 2020 ballot, but both campaigns were derailed by the coronavirus pandemic and failed to collect enough signatures by the deadline.

California

There are two potential routes to legalizing psychedelics possession in California: a legislative approach being spearheaded by Sen. Scott Wiener (D) and a ballot campaign to place the issue of psilocybin legalization before voters in November.

The senator put a pause on that proposal last year after it cleared the Senate and started to advance through the Assembly, and he’s used the extra time to build up support for the reform and ensure that it’s something that could pass the full legislature.

Wiener recently told Marijuana Moment that he feels there’s a “50/50” chance that his psychedelics reform bill will advance this session.

Meanwhile, California activists are separately pursuing psychedelics reform at the ballot, with Decriminalize California collecting signatures for a 2022 initiative to legalize psilocybin mushrooms in the state.

Colorado

Colorado voters could have the chance next year to vote on legalizing possession and personal cultivation of psychedelics, and creating a system of licensed businesses to produce psilocybin, DMT, ibogaine and mescaline for supervised use at “healing centers.”

A national advocacy group recently filed two separate psychedelics reform initiatives for Colorado’s 2022 ballot, both of which are titled the Natural Medicine Healing Act.

The first would legalize the possession, cultivation and an array of entheogenic substances, as well as establish a regulatory model for psychedelics therapy. The other is a similar, but somewhat more dialed-back proposal that would initially legalize psilocybin and psilocin alone for personal adult use while also allowing for their sale and administration in a therapeutic setting.

This filing comes more than two years after Denver became the first city in the U.S. to decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms. Various activists, including those involved in the 2019 campaign, have signaled interest in building upon the reform.

Delaware

A legislative effort to legalize marijuana for adult use in Delaware died for the 2021 session following disagreements among lawmakers over social equity funding. But that effort could be revived in the new year, with national advocates listing the state as a top target to enact legalization next.

Rep. Edward Osienski (D) said he’s spent the past few months revising his proposal to build more support and secure a vote, and he recently filed a new version of the bill.

Gov. John Carney (D) is another obstacle, however, calling legalization a “bad idea” last year as the reform push was underway. He’s also declined to say what he would do if legislators put a marijuana commerce bill on his desk.

Hawaii

A Hawaii bill to legalize recreational marijuana that cleared the Senate last year is still alive for the 2022 session, and it’s possible that the legislature will move to take it up again.

House Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs Committee Chairman Mark Nakashima (D) is largely responsible for the bill not being enacted last year, as he said he thinks the state should focus on improving its existing medical cannabis system before advancing adult-use legalization and declined to take action on the Senate-approved proposal. Gov. David Ige (D), who has also opposed certain cannabis reforms in the past, is another potential obstacle to passage.

But, because legalization has already cleared one full chamber of the legislature, the state is one to watch in 2022.

Idaho

In Idaho, activists with one campaign are moving forward with plans to put medical cannabis legalization on the state’s 2022 ballot, while another set of advocates have decided to suspend a campaign to legalize possession due to complications resulting from the coronavirus pandemic.

While the Personal Adult Marijuana Decriminalization Act (PAMDA) was cleared by Idaho officials for signature gathering in July, campaign spokesperson Russ Belville of Legalize the Idaho Way, Inc. told Marijuana Moment that “navigating a ballot initiative through a second wave of COVID has been trying, especially [for] a new type of marijuana initiative that simply depenalizes import of legal out-of-state purchases.”

“Therefore, in the interest of public safety, we’ve decided to suspend our active ballot initiative campaign for PAMDA,” he said. “However, we are continuing the concept of PAMDA in negotiations with Idaho legislators and political leaders with the goal of a bill for the next legislative session. Should our legislative efforts run aground and this pandemic eventually subside, we’ll resume a PAMDA ballot initiative campaign for 2024.”

A separate campaign, Kind Idaho, remains in the process of collecting signatures for a medical marijuana legalization initiative. A representative recently told Marijuana Moment that they have gathered about 10 percent of the required signatures to make the ballot and face an April 29 deadline to collect about 54,000 more signatures.

If things don’t work out for the campaign in 2022, activists will be looking ahead to future election cycles if the November election “doesn’t present us with the legislators necessary to move it forward through the legislative process,” Kind Idaho’s Joe Evans said.

“Mind you, we aren’t giving up the ghost on getting the initiative on the ballot this year,” he said. “It can still be done with the right combination of funding and volunteer support.”

Kansas

A medical cannabis bill that passed the House last year is still alive and poised for action in the Senate in 2022.

Kansas Democratic leaders want to go further, however, and recently announced new proposals to let voters decide on legalizing medical and adult-use marijuana in the state.

“It’s time to give voters their opportunity to have their say and let the legislature know how they feel,” House Minority Leader Tom Sawyer (D) said this month. If approved in the legislature and then by voters in November, the laws would take effect in July 2023.

Gov. Laura Kelly (D), for her part, supports medical cannabis. She previously pushed a separate proposal that would legalize medical cannabis and use the resulting revenue to support Medicaid expansion.

Kentucky

A Republican-led bill to legalize medical marijuana in Kentucky landed in the state legislature this month. The measure is an update to lead sponsor Rep. Jason Nemes’s (R) past legalization efforts and includes a number of conservative-minded adjustments aimed at wining broad support among lawmakers, including leaders of his own party who control the legislative agenda.

Nemes filed a medical legalization bill in 2020 that soundly passed the House but later died in the Senate without a vote amid the early part of the coronavirus pandemic. He reintroduced the legislation for the 2021 session, but it did not advance. In recent months, Nemes has working to build support for a new, scaled-back version of the bill for 2022 and in October said he was confident it could pass if only legislative leaders have the “courage” to allow a vote on it.

Gov. Andy Beshear (D) supports medical cannabis, and Democratic leaders in the legislature said the issue would be a top priority for this year.

Maryland

Late last month, a top Maryland lawmaker pre-filed a bill to put marijuana legalization on the state’s 2022 ballot.

The legislation, which seeks to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot, has been designated House Bill 1, signaling that it will be prioritized.

House Speaker Adrienne Jones (D) has been working to get the legislature in a good position to advance the reform quickly, announcing the formation of a cannabis workgroup last summer and stating that lawmakers “will pass legislation early” in 2022 to refer the question of legalization to voters.

Senate President Bill Ferguson (D), meanwhile, said in July that the reform is “beyond past due” in the state— but he seemed reluctant to embrace a referendum process and instead wants to pass a bill to end cannabis prohibition sooner than next November.

Michigan

There are efforts underway in Michigan to get statewide psychedelics and marijuana reform enacted this year, both legislatively and through the ballot.

Several Michigan cities have passed resolutions to decriminalize a wide range of psychedelics in the past couple years—most recently in Grand Rapids and Detroit. Building on those reforms, a pair of state senators introduced a bill in September to legalize the possession, cultivation and delivery of various plant- and fungi-derived psychedelics like psilocybin and mescaline.

The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Jeff Irwin (D), would amend state statute to exempt people from criminal penalties for such activities so long as they are not “receiving money or other valuable consideration for the entheogenic plant or fungus.”

As such, commercial production and sales would not be legalized under the measure. The legislation does clarify, however, that people can charge a “reasonable fee for counseling, spiritual guidance, or a related service that is provided in conjunction with the use of an entheogenic plant or fungus under the guidance and supervision of an individual providing the service.”

But the most likely route to broad reform might be through the ballot, with activists are planning to introduce a separate statewide psychedelics reform initiative that they hope to place before voters this November.

Minnesota

The year 2021 saw a bill to legalize marijuana in Minnesota move through a dozen House committees and then get approval by the full chamber, but it subsequently stalled in the GOP-controlled Senate. Lawmakers are ready to take up the reform fight again in 2022.

While the House-passed measure is still alive for 2022 in the two-year session, it’s unclear if new Senate leadership will be more amenable to advancing a policy change than prior leaders were.

Gov. Tim Walz (D), who signed legislation in May to allow patients to access smokable cannabis products, previously called on lawmakers to pursue adult-use legalization as a means to boost the economy and promote racial justice. In 2019 he directed state agencies to prepare to implement reform in anticipation of legalization eventually passing.

Mississippi

Mississippi lawmakers are moving ahead with a proposal to legalize medical cannabis in the state, though they’ve faced some resistance about certain provisions by Gov. Tate Reeves (R).

The main objection from the governor concerns the daily purchase limits for patients, which he says are too high. He’s signaled that he would veto the bill if the purchase limit isn’t reduced, but a key state senator suggested last month that they would have the votes to override that action if it’s taken.

But Sen. Brice Wiggins (R), chairman of the Judiciary Committee Division A who is also running for a seat in Congress, says the people of Mississippi spoke loud and clear when they voted to approve a medical cannabis legalization initiative last year, and lawmakers have a duty to deliver on the reform after the state Supreme Court invalidated it for procedural reasons.

Lawmakers have already made several concessions to the governor as they’ve continued negotiations on legislation to replace the voter-approved ballot measure, and advocates hoped everything would be resolved in time for Reeves to convene a special session to pass it this year, as he suggested he’d do. But as the goal post continued to be pushed back, it became clear that legislators would need to tackle the reform in the 2022 session.

House and Senate leaders announced in September that they had come to an agreement on the reform, yet the governor came back with several objections, forcing legislators to go back and make some compromises. Even after they did that, Reeves held firm on what leadership says are “unreasonable demands.”

The Senate has already approved the new bill, just days into the new session, and now it heads to the House.

Missouri

There are currently two separate campaigns working to get legalization initiatives on the Missouri’s 2022 ballot, in addition to legislative proposals to enact the reform.

Legal Missouri 2022 kicked off its campaign last month, with plans to deploy hundreds of signature gatherers at major cities throughout the state.

“We are pushing full steam ahead with both paid and volunteer signature collection efforts and look forward to Missourians voting on adult use legalization this fall,” campaign manager John Payne told Marijuana Moment. He added they’ve hired a signature gathering firm that they worked

Payne previously worked with the group New Approach Missouri to successfully get a medical cannabis initiative passed by voters in 2018.

A separate campaign, Fair Access Missouri, is separately exploring multiple citizen initiatives with the hopes of getting at least one on the ballot this year. Three of the four would create a system of legalized cannabis sales for adults 21 and older, while another would simply amend the state’s existing medical marijuana program.

Meanwhile, Rep. Shamed Dogan (R) recently filed a joint resolution to place a constitutional amendment on marijuana legalization on the 2022 ballot. He introduced a similar proposal last year, but it did not advance.

There are some advocates who want to see the legislature take the lead on establishing a regulated marijuana market, but others remain skeptical that will actually happen in the state’s GOP-controlled House and Senate.

Nebraska

Nebraska activists are fed up with the GOP-controlled legislature blocking efforts to enact marijuana reform, and so they’re making another push to put medical cannabis legalization on the 2022 ballot.

Advocates unveiled the language of a pair of initiatives that, together, would protect qualified patients from legal consequences for cannabis and regulate businesses that produce, distribute and sell marijuana products to those patients.

Each of the ballot measures will need 87,000 signatures of support from registered voters by July to qualify for the 2022 ballot.

“We are confident we will get the signatures to qualify for the ballot because we have successfully done this before, during a pandemic,” Sen. Anna Wishart (D) told Marijuana Moment, referring to a 2020 campaign when Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana qualified its prior cannabis measure for the ballot—only to be thwarted by the state Supreme Court.

“We collected close to 200,000 signatures in 2020, well over the necessary 122,000, only to be kicked off the ballot by the Supreme Court in a 5-2 decision,” she said. “We learned from the Supreme Court challenge and brought language this time that we believe will withstand any opposition.”

Wishart said that polling conducted two years ago showed that more than 70 percent of voters across political lines back the policy change.

“I know how strongly this is supported because I drove across the state to collect signatures in 2020 to some of the most rural areas of the country and I was met with support,” the senator said. “I collected signatures of cowboys and cowgirls, for example, at a cattle sale.”

“What this will mean for the state is that Nebraskans will be treated like patients and no longer like criminals,” she said. “This is an issue about medical freedom and human dignity and it is long overdue that we join the rest of the country in legalizing medical cannabis.”

New Hampshire

New Hampshire’s House of Representatives kicked off the 2022 session by approving a bill to legalize the possession and cultivation of marijuana by adults 21 and older. It now heads to the Senate, where cannabis reforms have had a tougher time advancing in the past.

But there are other pending proposals from lawmakers to enact broad legalization, including three to place constitutional amendments on the ballot for voters to decide on the reform in November.

It would take a supermajority 60 percent vote in both chambers to advance any of the proposed constitutional amendments. But while that may be a tall task in the GOP-controlled legislature, if they’re successful, it would enable lawmakers to avoid a likely veto on statutory reform legislation from anti-legalization Gov. Chris Sununu (R).

Should legislators approve placing a constitutional amendment to legalize cannabis on the ballot, 67 percent of voters would then have to vote in favor for it to be enacted. Recent polling indicates that residents are ready for the reform, with three in four New Hampshirites favoring legalization.

North Carolina

A proposal to legalize medical cannabis in North Carolina advanced through three Senate committees last year, and advocates are optimistic that the reform could be taken up again in the new year.

Under the proposal, patients would be allowed to access cannabis if they have a “debilitating medical condition” such as cancer, epilepsy, HIV/AIDS, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Patients could possess up to one and a half ounces of marijuana, but home cultivation would not be permitted.

North Carolina’s House majority whip said last month that he’s in favor of the reform but has not done a vote count to see how much support it has in his chamber.

A majority of North Carolina adults support legalizing marijuana for recreational use—and three in four say it should be legal for medical purposes—according to a poll released last year.

North Dakota

Marijuana legalization could come to North Dakota either through an act of the legislature or the ballot this year.

The state House approved a reform bill to put legalization on the ballot in 2022 last year, but the full Senate rejected it.

Meanwhile, advocates with two separate campaigns are pushing for separate legalization referendums.

David Owen, chairman of Legalize ND, told Marijuana Moment that the group is “still working with stakeholders and partners to determine the best pathway forward but are confident that news will come soon.”

“We are determined to legalize recreational marijuana in North Dakota but are still exploring options for what the best path is especially given the SD Supreme Court decision,” he said, referring to a state Supreme Court ruling late last year in neighboring South Dakota that determined a voter-approved marijuana legalization initiative was invalid on procedural grounds.

Another group called the North Dakota Cannabis Caucus has separately working to put marijuana reform on the ballot.

There’s a chance the group could get enough signatures under the state’s timeline to put the reform on the June primary ballot, but Dustin Peyer, the chief petitioner, told Marijuana Moment it’s “not likely.” Instead, the probable plan is to turn in signatures by July to get on the November ballot.

Peyer said the group is “currently looking to build a new petition that will take less signatures and change the medical program directly.”

“Ultimately the constitutional right to grow cannabis on private property is our goal and this petition will continue forward,” he said. “We have a growing base of local business support that we are very grateful for. However, the current monopolized market created by a super majority of prohibitionist Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike is leading to many issues in the program.”

Ohio

Activists and lawmakers in Ohio are hoping to get reform enacted in 2022.

Last month, Ohio advocates submitted to the state what they said were enough signatures for an initiative to force lawmakers to take up the issue of legalization. But the secretary of state’s office said this month that there weren’t enough valid signatures, so the campaign collected more and turned in the new submissions this week.

The measure that legislators would be required to consider would legalize possession of up to 2.5 ounces of cannabis for adults 21 and older, and they could also have up to 15 grams of marijuana concentrates. Individuals could grow up to six plants for personal use, with a maximum 12 plants per household.

Separately, a legalization bill that was the first of its kind to be introduced in the Ohio legislature last year would legalize the possession, sale and cultivation of cannabis by adults. It’s being championed by Reps. Casey Weinstein (D) and Terrence Upchurch (D).

A pair of Ohio Republican lawmakers similarly filed a bill to legalize marijuana in the state in December. Reps. Jamie Callender (R) and Ron Ferguson (R) first announced their plan to push the legislative reform proposal in October and circulated a co-sponsorship memo to build support for the measure.

There are also additional local reform efforts underway in Ohio for 2022.

After voters in seven cities approved ballot measures to decriminalize marijuana possession during last November’s election—which builds on a slew of previous local reforms in the state—campaigns are now looking to enact decriminalization in Marietta, Rushville, Rutland, Shawnee, McArthur and Laurelville.

Ohio marijuana activists already successfully proved that they turned in enough valid signatures to put a local decriminalization initiative before Kent voters after having missed the 2021 ballot due to a verification error on the part of county officials.

“It is the local [decriminalization initiatives] that have pushed the state to act,” Don Keeney of NORML Appalachia of Ohio told Marijuana Moment. “We are looking forward to adding as many local municipalities as time permits. We are gearing up for another good run at it. Solid change starts at the local grassroots level.”

Oklahoma

There are currently two campaigns working to put marijuana legalization on the state’s 2022 ballot, as well as a separate initiative to rework Oklahoma’s existing medical cannabis program.

The latest campaign is being supported by the national New Approach PAC, which has been behind a number of successful state-level reform initiatives. A separate group of local activists, Oklahomans for Responsible Cannabis Action, also filed initiatives to legalize recreational marijuana and remodel the state’s medical cannabis program in October.

Oklahoma activists had previously attempted to qualify a legalization measure for the 2020 ballot. They filed a petition to legalize cannabis for adult use in December 2019, but signature gathering fell short due in part to procedural delays and the coronavirus pandemic.

Rhode Island

A deal on a marijuana legalization bill in Rhode Island appears imminent, with key lawmakers recently saying the legislation should be introduced in the coming days following months of negotiations between the House, Senate and governor’s office.

The Senate already approved legalization legislation last year.

Many issues have been resolved over the course of negotiations, but the question of who should be in charge of regulating the program—an existing agency or a newly created body—has been a sticking point.

“The House and Senate intend to soon have a draft of legislation ready, which will serve as a framework to begin a robust public hearing process,” House Speaker Joseph Sherkarchi (D) said. “We may not be the first state to legalize marijuana, but our goal is to do it in a way that is best for all of Rhode Islanders.”

South Carolina

South Carolina lawmakers are positioned to advance a medical marijuana legalization bill that’s being championed by Sen. Tom Davis (R).

The senator told WMBF News this month that he’s “optimistic about this bill being approved by both chambers of the legislature and sent to Governor McMaster before we adjourn in May.”

“I’ve done a pretty good canvassing of my colleagues in the state Senate,” he said. “I’m confident that I have a majority of senators in favor of this bill.”

Davis previously said that he’s received assurances from a top Senate leader that his measure will be taken up as the first order of business at the beginning of this year.

The senator said that he “had hoped it would be debated and voted on before we adjourned in May” after clearing the Senate Medical Affairs Committee in March. But that didn’t pan out after another lawmaker placed a hold on the legislation.

The senator’s legislation as filed last year would allow patients with qualifying conditions to possess and purchase up to two ounces of cannabis every two weeks.

South Dakota

In a setback for activists late last year, the South Dakota Supreme Court ruled that a voter-approved 2020 marijuana legalization initiative was invalid on procedural grounds. But advocates are now pursuing a two-track plan to enact the reform this year.

In the legislature, a cannabis reform bill has been formally recommended by a leadership panel for the upcoming session. Activists with South Dakotans for Better Marijuana Laws (SDBML) will also continue collecting signatures for a 2022 ballot initiative—though they hope to work with lawmakers to advance reform legislatively ahead of this year’s election.

A Marijuana Interim Study Committee made the formal recommendation for the legislature to take up legalization following a series of hearings. The recommendation was agreed to late last year by the legislature’s Executive Board, which is led by the House speaker and Senate president pro tempore.

Voters also approved a separate statutory medical cannabis ballot measure in 2020, and that wasn’t challenged in the courts and took effect in July.

Washington, D.C.

Lawmakers and advocates in Washington, D.C. are ready and eager to proceed with legalizing marijuana sales as soon as a congressional appropriations rider is lifted.

For years, the District has been prohibited from using its local tax dollars to enact the reform despite voters approving an initiative to legalize possession, personal cultivation and gifting in 2014. The U.S. House of Representatives approved a spending package that removes that rider, despite the Biden administration proposing to keep it in its own budget request, and now advocates are waiting to see whether the policy is ultimately stripped in the final bill for fiscal year 2022.

Local lawmakers held a joint hearing in November on a pair of bills to authorize the legal sale of recreational marijuana and significantly expand the existing medical cannabis program in the nation’s capital.

One bill sponsored by Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) would “require a regulatory scheme to license the cultivation, production, and retail sale of cannabis in the District.”

Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), who represents the District in Congress, said in November that she is “closer than ever” to removing the blockade on cannabis commerce in her district.

Meanwhile, Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) said in April that local officials are prepared to move forward with implementing a legal system of recreational marijuana sales in the nation’s capital just as soon as they can get over the final “hurdle” of congressional interference.

Washington State

Activists are preparing to introduce a ballot initiative to broadly decriminalize drugs in 2022, similar to what neighboring Oregon voters passed in 2020.

Christina Blocker of Commit to Change WA told Marijuana Moment that the campaign is “energized by the support that we have received across the state of Washington,” adding that “2022 is the year where we will have the opportunity to end the War on Drugs and its impacts on our families, our neighbors, and our communities.”

The group was formerly known as Treatment First WA and, in 2020, attempted to qualify a decriminalization measure for that year’s state ballot. That initiative would have made unlawful possession of any drug a civil infraction, referred people found with drugs to a services assessment and funded a massive expansion of outreach and recovery programs.

When the pandemic interrupted the signature gathering effort for that measure, organizers shifted their focus to the legislature. After months of delay, a bill that was largely based on the earlier initiative was introduced but eventually died after clearing one House committee.

State lawmakers did reduce Washington’s criminal penalty for drug possession from a felony to a misdemeanor last year, but that was in response to the state Supreme Court invalidating the state’s decades-old felony law, which temporarily left no valid law on the books against simple possession.

While more progressive Democrats urged against reinstating criminal penalties of ay kind, the legislature ultimately adopted the misdemeanor charge along with plans to create a statewide suite of treatment and recovery services. The law, widely seen by advocates as a half-step toward meaningful reform, took effect in May with Gov. Jay Inslee’s (D) signature.

Separately, a pair of state lawmakers recently introduced legislation that would legalize what the bill calls “supported psilocybin experiences” by adults 21 and older.

Wyoming

Wyoming activists recently said that they’ve made solid progress in collecting signatures for a pair of ballot initiatives to decriminalize marijuana possession and legalize medical cannabis, but they didn’t get enough to make the 2022 ballot deadline and will be aiming for 2024 while simultaneously pushing the legislature to advance reform even sooner.

Weather conditions, the ongoing pandemic and late approval for their petitions by state officials made the prospect of putting legalization and decriminalization before voters this year especially challenging.

Now, in addition to continuing to collect signatures for a 2024 initiative, activists will be pushing lawmakers to file new bills that contain the language of the ballot measures.

A bill to legalize and regulate cannabis for adult use in Wyoming advanced out of a House committee in March, but it did not move further in the legislature by the end of the session.

Activists say the stage is set for an active year for drug policy reform.

While it’s unclear how many of these bills and ballot proposals will ultimately advance and become enacted, there’s a sense of optimism that the reform movement will expand rapidly in 2022. And advocates are pleased to see the range of policy reforms that are being pursued.

“As we look ahead to 2022, we have many opportunities to expand America’s access to medical cannabis and regulated cannabis markets,” Jax James, who was recently hired as NORML’s state policy director, told Marijuana Moment. “NORML is tracking hundreds of bills that have already been filed as well as ballot initiatives across the country. We look forward to another year of important reforms passing in many states.”

“No matter what state you reside in, registering to vote, engaging in the primary election, the political convention cycle and the general election are integral to further advancement,” she said.

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A top federal drug official says the “train has left the station” on psychedelics.

National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Director Nora Volkow said people are going to keep using substances such as psilocybin—especially as the reform movement expands and there’s increased attention being drawn to the potential therapeutic benefits—and so researchers and regulators will need to keep up.

The comments came at a psychedelics workshop Volkow’s agency cohosted with the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) last week.

The NIDA official said that, to an extent, it’s been overwhelming to address new drug trends in the psychedelics space. But at the same time, she sees “an incredible opportunity to also modify the way that we are doing things.”

“What is it that the [National Institutes of Health] can do to help accelerate research in this field so that we can truly understand what are the potentials, and ultimately the application, of interventions that are bought based on psychedelic drugs?” Volkow said.

The director separately told Marijuana Moment on Friday in an emailed statement that part of the challenge for the agency and researchers is the fact that psychedelics are strictly prohibited as Schedule I drugs under the federal Controlled Substances Act.

“Researchers must obtain a Schedule I registration which, unlike obtaining registrations for Schedule II substances (which include fentanyl, methamphetamine, and cocaine), is administratively challenging and time consuming,” she said. “This process may deter some scientists from conducting research on Schedule I drugs.”

“In response to concerns from researchers, NIDA is involved in interagency discussions to facilitate research on Schedule I substances,” Volkow said, adding that the agency is “pleased” the Drug Enforcement Administration recently announced plans to significantly increase the quota of certain psychedelic drugs to be produced for use in research.

“It will also be important to streamline the process of obtaining Schedule I registrations to further the science on these substances, including examining their therapeutic potential,” she said.

At Thursday’s event, the official talked about how recent, federally funded surveys showed that fewer college-aged adults are drinking alcohol and are instead opting for psychedelics and marijuana. She discussed the findings in an earlier interview with Marijuana Moment as well.

Don’t miss out on the @NIDAnews, @NIAAAnews, & @NIMHgov-sponsored virtual Workshop on Psychedelics as Therapeutics: Gaps, Challenges, and Opportunities, Jan. 12‒13, 2022. Learn more and register: https://t.co/S1zttkoYXq pic.twitter.com/C2Qrk6FN9a

— NIDAnews (@NIDAnews) January 10, 2022

“Let’s learn from history,” she said. “Let’s see what we have learned from the marijuana experience.”

While studies have found that marijuana use among young people has generally remained stable or decreased amid the legalization movement, there has been an increase in cannabis consumption among adults, she said. And “this is likely to happen [with psychedelics] as more and more attention is placed on these psychedelic drugs.”

“I think, to a certain extent, with all the attention that the psychedelic drugs have attracted, the train has left the station and that people are going to start to use it,” Volkow said. “People are going to start to use it whether [the Food and Drug Administration] approves or not.

There are numerous states and localities where psychedelics reform is being explored and pursued both legislatively and through ballot initiative processes.

On Wednesday—during the first part of the two-day federal event that saw nearly 4,000 registrants across 21 time zones—NIMH Director Joshua Gordon stressed that his agency has “been supporting research on psychedelics for some time.”

Tune in today and tomorrow for the @NIH workshop on Psychedelics as Therapeutics, which will examine findings on psychoplastogens for treating depression, post-traumatic stress, and substance and alcohol use disorders. https://t.co/Qzxte5xJt9

— Joshua A. Gordon (@NIMHDirector) January 12, 2022

“We can think of NIMH’s interests in studying psychedelics both in terms of proving that they work and also in terms of demonstrating the mechanism by which they work,” he said. “NIMH has a range of different funding opportunity announcements and other expressions that are priorities aimed at a mechanistic focus and mechanistic approach to drug development.”

Meanwhile, Volkow also made connections between psychedelics and the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic. She said, for example, that survey data showing increased use of psychedelics “may be a way that people are using to try to escape” the situation.

But she also drew a metaphor, saying that just as how the pandemic “forced” federal health officials to accelerate the development and approval of COVID-19 vaccines because of the “urgency of the situation,” one could argue that “actually there is an urgency to bring treatments [such as emerging psychedelic medicines] for people that are suffering from severe mental illness which can be devastating.”

But as Volkow has pointed out, the Schedule I classification of these substances under federal law inhibits such research and development.

The official has also repeatedly highlighted and criticized the racial disparities in drug criminalization enforcement overall.

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Especially amid the existential dread of our current COVID hellscape, people have increasingly turned to psychedelics as portals to empathy and enlightenment. Tech bro hype aside, though, they’re not for everyone. Tripping isn’t recommended for those with severe heart disease or who show signs of schizophrenia and related disorders. Many others are simply unprepared for the intensity of a full-blown trip.

But what if you could unlock the same altered state of consciousness that psychedelics do — as well as their potential to treat PTSD, major depressive disorder, and other mental health conditions — whilst completely sober?

Some virtual reality experiences could offer just that. The extremely buzzy meditation app Tripp allows you to float through celestial bodies, fractals, and other awe-inspiring scenes. The University of Sussex’s Hallucination Machine mimics the swirling hallucinations triggered by classical psychedelics like psilocybin (the main compound in shrooms) and LSD. Meanwhile, Atlas V’s Ayahuasca, Kosmik Journey immerses users in pulsing, kaleidoscopic images, similar to those created by the hallucinogenic brew.

While tripping sans drugs is an intriguing possibility, I can’t help but be skeptical. Sure, VR can replicate the auditory and visual aspects of a trip. But what about its intensely spiritual, ineffable profundity, which also seems important for the psychological healing that psychedelics promise? I spoke with Matthew Johnson, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins Medicine, about the extent to which VR apps can mimic psychedelics — and their therapeutic potential.

To definitively respond to this line of inquiry, “what you’d really need is the study comparing the two [psychedelics and VR] head to head,” says Johnson, who researches the effects of psychedelics. Even studies that look at them separately, but under similar conditions, would provide more clarity. Scientists still have yet to conduct them, though, Johnson tells Mic.

But as it stands, “I highly doubt whether an app alone is going to approximate the magnitude of the efficacy of psychedelic therapy,” he says. That’s partly because VR can only directly manipulate the perceptual, but not the emotional, aspect of a trip.

It’s the emotional aspect — especially the mystical experience observed at higher doses, which can include revealed truth and ineffability, among other powerful qualities — that seems to underpin psychedelics’ therapeutic potential. Studies have correlated it with long-term positive outcomes for treatment-resistant depression, lowered depression and anxiety in cancer patients, and greater likelihood of quitting smoking, for example.

People have highly emotional experiences on 5-MeO-DMT (derived from the venom of the Bufo alvarius toad), even if it’s less visual than DMT (the main active ingredient in ayahuasca) — suggesting that “maybe you won’t get a meaningful effect from just the perceptual effects,” Johnson says. “But perhaps you do.” It’s also possible that the perceptual effect contributes to the emotional effect. At this point, we just don’t know.

That said, the therapeutic results have been so large in preliminary studies of psychedelics that “even if you had an effect that was a quarter of that size, that’s still important to pursue,” Johnson says. To his knowledge, no studies have investigated whether VR can offer the same mental health benefits psychedelics have shown.

For people advised to steer clear of psychedelics, VR may offer a safer alternative, unless it does end up closely mimicking a trip, in which case it, too, could spur a panic reaction. But that seems less likely, Johnson says — and you can always remove the headset if it all feels like too much. In contrast, you’re stuck tripping, no matter how badly you want to stop. VR would also allow you the flexibility to program your experience, maybe transition to a beautiful field of flowers to calm yourself down, or crank up the intensity if you’re ready. “You want to test these things, but it’s reasonable that it [VR] would be, relatively speaking, safer than psychedelics,” Johnson says.

Trippy VR experiences might seem like psychedelics lite.

While Johnson believes it’s worth testing VR experiences that seek to recreate a psychedelic trip on their own, he’s also exploring using them alongside psychedelic therapy. In a study slated to start in a month or two, he and his colleagues will compare participants’ self-reports about their creativity and engagement with their professional work during portions of psilocybin-assisted therapy sessions with and without VR.

Rather than an app designed to mimic a trip, Johnson and his team will experiment with various images to see how they influence participants’ psychedelic experiences. (Maybe, say, exploding fireworks won’t have an effect, but nature scenes will.) They hope to determine whether VR can enhance them — in other words, whether participants will find these experiences more meaningful with VR than with psilocybin alone.

In a similar vein, Tripp and PsyAssist — a company acquired by Tripp that creates digital psychedelic therapy tools — plan to release a product that would let providers and patients use VR, augmented reality, and mobile technology in ketamine-assisted therapy, Forbes reported in August.

While trippy VR experiences might seem like psychedelics lite, the bottom line is that they come with both promise and risk, just like the real thing, according to Johnson. To an optimization-obsessed generation constantly in search of “brain hacks,” a sober shortcut to the healing potential of psychedelics has massive appeal. But “we need to follow the data,” Johnson says, “rather than what we hope is going to work.”