Supporters of a Massachusetts psychedelic decriminalization and legalization measure scored a big win on the night of August 5, as Cambridge City Council voted to endorse it. The measure is due to be put to Massachusetts voters as Question 4 on the November 5 ballot.
The formal endorsement by city leadership makes Harvard’s hometown the second Massachusetts municipality to officially back the statewide bill. It comes just a few weeks after Somerville’s council voted resoundingly in favor of endorsing the ballot measure.
The two cities previously passed trailblazing measures making psychedelics the lowest priority for municipal law enforcement. Those 2021 moves had a snowball effect, with an additional six cities in Massachusetts—Salem, Northampton, Easthampton, Amherst, Provincetown and Medford—since passing similar local measures of their own.
Now, the two Boston-adjacent cities’ support for the statewide measure could once again serve as a catalyst for others to follow their lead.
The proposed measure would decriminalize personal use, possession, home cultivation and personal distribution of psilocybin, psilocyn, mescaline, ibogaine and DMT at the state level. Additionally, the bill would create a regulatory structure for psychedelic-assisted therapy, similar to the state’s battle scarred Cannabis Control Commission.
“These treatments have proven to be a helpful way to treat serious mental health issues like depression, anxiety and PTSD.”
The Cambridge City Council endorsement vote was introduced during the August 5 meeting by Vice Mayor Marc Mcgovern, who emphasized increasing access to next-generation mental health care options for local residents.
The motion to endorse the measure ultimately passed in an 8-1 vote, with one councilor absent.
“These treatments have proven to be a helpful way to treat serious mental health issues like depression, anxiety and PTSD,” Councilor Mcgovern said in an August 6 press release. “We have a mental health crisis and want licensed clinicians to have access to tools to help veterans, first-responders, anyone else who is struggling.”
“I am eternally grateful to Vice Mayor McGovern and his colleagues for standing up for suffering veterans, hospice patients, and others who have waited long enough for more effective treatments,” Graham Moore, educational outreach director for the ballot campaign, told Filter.
Moore, a lifetime Cambridge resident, made an eye-catching speech to Somerville City Council prior to that earlier vote. His psychedelic advocacy, he said, was spurred in part by having lost his best friend to suicide, and in part by his own use of psilocybin to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in consultation with a psychiatrist.
The statewide measure—titled An Act Relative to the Taxation and Regulation of Natural Psychedelic Substances—is backed by the New Approach PAC, the group behind previous statewide psychedelic reform campaigns in Oregon and Colorado. New Approach is somewhat of a spin-off of the Marijuana Policy Project, the advocacy group that led cannabis legalization efforts in Massachusetts over a decade ago. Just as with those efforts, political strategy powerhouse Dewey Square Group has been brought in to advise the psychedelic campaign—now formally known as “Yes on 4.”
The campaign hasn’t been all smooth sailing. The 2023 arrival of DC-based New Approach PAC in Massachusetts was criticized by some psychedelic groups in the state for an apparent lack of consultation with local advocates.
And in November 2023, Yes on 4—then known as Mass for Mental Health Options—was forced to re-gather nearly 12,000 signatures after a large portion of the first batch was ruled invalid. The forms used by campaign canvassers had been printed with unaffiliated labor union logos.
There are also prominent critics within the psychedelic community of the substance of the measure. These include Dr. Mason Marks, of Harvard’s Petrie-Flom Center, who has strong reservations about a therapeutic-use regulatory structure similar to the New Approach-backed models implemented in Oregon and Colorado.
Those concerns include potential high costs for recipients under a tightly regulated therapeutic model limiting access, as seen in Oregon. He’s also concerned that the model would block the inclusion and remuneration of Indigenous and traditional healers. And he’s called for the inclusion of employment protections for people using psychedelics outside of work hours.
“I’m thrilled that the city of Cambridge has endorsed the ballot measure, and hope others will follow suit in recognizing that we desperately need new treatment options.”
Yet some prominent psychedelic advocates in Massachusetts are backing the measure. They include Jamie Morey, founder of Parents for Plant Medicine, who now serves as community engagement director for the Yes on 4 campaign.
“I’m thrilled that the city of Cambridge has endorsed the ballot measure,” she told Filter, “and hope others will follow suit in recognizing that we desperately need new treatment options to address the mental health care crisis affecting families across the Commonwealth.”
“I urge other communities and individuals across the state to be guided by compassion, logic, and evidence-based research on the safety and efficacy of psychedelic therapy,” she continued, “and give our suffering citizens the right to heal by voting yes on 4.”
Cambridge’s decision was also applauded by Cambridge Biotherapies, a company which offers treatments including esketamine (Spravato), and which lent significant support to the earlier local decriminalization efforts in Cambridge and Somerville.
“This measure represents a significant advancement in expanding access to transformative mental health treatments,” CFO and COO Brendan O’Connor, who formerly cofounded Decriminalize Nature Massachusetts, told Filter. “Cambridge Biotherapies remains dedicated to supporting the community as the need for safe, experienced psychedelic-supported healing spaces grows.”
Photograph (cropped) of Cambridge City Hall by Thomas Steiner via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 2.5
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