Inside the Campaign to Legalize Magic Mushrooms in California

A ballot measure would create a regulatory framework for recreational sales.

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On May 7, 2019, Denver voted to become the first city in America to decriminalize magic mushrooms. On June 4, 2019, Oakland, Calif. decriminalized all psychedelic plants and fungus. On January 28, the neighboring Bay Area city of Santa Cruz followed suit. And now statewide efforts are underway in Washington State, Oregon, and California.

"When it comes to psychedelics, we feel people should have the freedom of choice," Ryan Munevar, the head of Decriminalize California, told Reason. "In essence, cognitive liberty."

Now the group wants to take the psychedelic decriminalization movement a step further by convincing California voters not only to de-prioritize enforcement of laws against the possession and consumption of psychedelics but to create an actual legal framework for commercial sales via an open-source ballot initiative.

"We realized, all right, let's make sure nobody else goes to jail for this. Let's give it a proper, regulated system," says Munevar. "And we realized in order to do that, you'd actually have to, in essence, legalize sales."

But this approach is controversial within the movement. "We led from a place of love—that is we didn't push commodification. We pushed equitable access and just decriminalizing our relationship with nature," says Carlos Plazola, head of Decriminalize Nature in Oakland.

Dr. Charles Grob, director of adolescent and child psychiatry at UCLA-Harborside, is worried that both the decriminalization and legalization movements could undermine the significant progress made in the field of psychedelic research.

"My concern is, to what degree will it attract the attention of individuals who…don't understand how to optimally structure the experience," says Charles Grob, who co-authored a landmark study involving the dosing of terminal cancer patients with psilocybin.

Grob wants psychedelics to be used primarily in clinical settings for now.

"What we observed in the cancer study was that our subjects…were in a great existential crisis. Their sense of self had eroded…There was often a sense of loss of meaning, loss of purpose," says Grob.

Grob is one of many scientists working in the field of psychedelic research, which has experienced several breakthroughs in recent years thanks to the decades-long effort of the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies (MAPS).

MAPS has funded studies treating PTSD in veterans with MDMA, more commonly known as ecstasy. The results were so promising that the FDA designated it a "breakthrough therapy," fast-tracking the approval process so that the treatment could be available by as early as 2021, pending completion of phase 3 clinical trials.

But Grob is wary of making psychedelics available for purchase to the public without guidance from experienced professionals in a clinical setting.

"Nothing is without risk," says Grob, who's published research about adverse interactions between certain psychedelics and SSRI antidepressants.

But Munevar from Decriminalize California worries that legalizing only medical uses would be too restrictive.

"The cost of therapy eliminates a lot of people, which means basically only rich white people would be able to use it," says Munevar.

"This is a people's movement," says Norris."There's a much broader range of people who maybe can't get into the cultural ethos of a clinical system, maybe can't afford a clinical system."

As for the effort to fully legalize psychedelics in California, the attorney general's office approved the initiative's language in early January, and the campaign is currently collecting the 625,000 signatures it needs to qualify for the ballot, which Munevar believes is the biggest challenge the campaign will face.

"This thing is won or lost in the next five months as it is," says Munevar.

And Plazola hopes that the decriminalization movement doesn't stop with Oakland, California, or the U.S.

"My hope for the next five years for the decriminalization movement is that it's an international movement, that it's being talked about at the United Nations," says Plazola. "Psychedelics never should have been made illegal to begin with, nor should any relationship between humans and nature be made illegal."

Produced by Zach Weissmueller. Camera by John Osterhoust, James Lee Marsh, and Weissmueller. Additional sound editing by Ian Keyser. 

Photo credits: Magic mushroom in the forest, Photo 42494972 © Kmetix, Dreamstime.com