What comes next for the “psychedelic renaissance”? Massachusetts has a decriminalization and limited legalization measure on the November ballot. Comparable models are meanwhile coming into focus in Oregon and Colorado, where they were previously approved by voters. But high on the list of frontline campaigns to watch over the coming year is one in Washington State.
Led by an eclectic group of veterans, scientists, lawyers and activists from the legacy psychedelic market, it’s known as REACH WA (Responsible Entheogen Access & Community Healing Coalition)—and has developed Initiative Measure No. 2076, formally titled the Natural Psychedelics and Supportive Services Act.
The group’s leaders sense momentum, after recent developments including the August 13 adoption of a law enforcement deprioritization measure in Olympia. But their own statewide measure won’t be on the November ballot. Instead, they’re weighing a run in either 2025 or 2026, depending on their funding position. Regardless of the timing, the nature of their efforts is already generating buzz.
Prioritizing decriminalization, REACH WA’s measure would allow adults 21 and older to legally possess, use, cultivate, prepare, gift, or transfer substances such as psilocybin, psilocin, DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, and mescaline, without compensation. Peyote is excluded over conservation and Indigenous-rights concerns.
A unique carveout would legally protect legacy psychedelics-market participants in being paid to administer entheogenic plants.
The measure would additionally “create a natural psychedelics community resource advisory council for the purposes of defining and promoting best practices and community standards in the provision of paid supportive services.”
This 19-person council would serve as the state’s de facto regulatory body. Its proposed composition is interesting. Besides certain state or county officials and medical and mental health experts, the members would be drawn from organizations focused on: Indigenous people, veterans, disability rights, restorative or transformative justice, recovery and harm reduction, among others. A community-based psychedelic society and psychedelic-oriented religious group would be represented—as would another member simply defined as a Washington resident with lived experience of using psychedelics.
But perhaps the most eye-catching element of the measure is an equity-minded provision that would allow for compensated peer-supported services. This unique carveout—it has not been advanced at the state level anywhere else—would legally protect legacy psychedelics-market participants in being paid to administer entheogenic plants and offer support.
“People are already engaging with psychedelics in the underground,” REACH WA Co-Director Rachel Cervenak, who also serves on the Psychedelic Bar Association’s Religious Use Committee, told Filter. The aim is to safeguard that space, and the people involved, by bringing it out into the open.
As such, she continued, REACH’s concerted efforts to engage members of the underground community are designed to “empower people to make their own choices responsibly, just as they already do with cannabis and alcohol… [which] will be really helpful in shifting where people stand.”
“The community already exists. We’re already here, and we’re writing for what’s already here and we’re trying to protect.”
REACH WA has anticipated—and received—criticism of its peer-to-peer services provision, which makes for a far less restrictive model than Oregon’s psilocybin-only, licensed-location scheme. The coalition insists that the concerns of skeptical voters about a potential “free-for-all” were considered throughout the drafting process.
But it has remained committed to supporting the state’s robust legacy market, in which many practioners follow Indigenous traditions dating back hundreds or thousands of years.
“The community already exists,” REACH WA board member and former Army medic Lauren Feringa reiterated to Filter. “Like, we’re already here and … we’re writing for what’s already here and we’re trying to protect. This makes me want to cry, because we’re trying to protect these people that we really love.”
Feringa, who also founded the Hippie and a Veteran Foundation, emphasized that for her, the fight is “not about money,” but rather about increasing safe and equitable access.
REACH WA has undergone considerable evolution as it has grown. Once spearheaded by a small, passionate group of advocates, its network now includes an array of professionals from different fields, college students and legislators from across the political spectrum. They used a notably open and collaborative process to develop their proposal, publicly inviting input and feedback.
“There’s a lot of potential trade-offs that we’ve had to assess.”
This expansion brought in expertise to help better navigate the complexities of political advocacy. But pragmatically assembling a broad-based coalition in order to advance reform can often involve compromises—a reality that isn’t lost on those involved.
“We feel this tension between, on the one hand, wanting to be … visionary and progressive … and as inclusive as possible,” REACH WA advisory board member Jon Dennis told Filter, “and on the other hand [wanting to] come up with this completely amazing, radical bill” that can be passed.
The campaign has sometimes found itself treading a narrow line to integrate its own ideals with other stakeholders’ public safety concerns. Public use of psychedelics, for example, is not protected by the draft measure, which also excludes synthetic or animal-derived versions of the drugs.
“We’re a special interest group,” said Dennis, an attorney who served on Oregon’s inaugural Psilocybin Advisory Board. “We have to kind of, in some ways, play to the middle … so there’s a lot of potential trade-offs that we’ve had to assess.”
“It’s worthwhile and important to just articulate the vision,” he emphasized. But “that’s not the only exercise we’re engaging in here,” when REACH WA also has a commitment to “actually passing passable reforms.”
“I think it’s a step in the right direction.”
Some prominent psychedelic advocates who aren’t directly involved in the campaign are positive about the approach.
“Looking at what REACH WA is doing with the new initiative in Washington, I think it’s a step in the right direction,” Ifetayo Harvey told Filter.
Harvey, a longtime psychedelic equity advocate and executive director of the People of Color Psychedelic Collective, added that REACH’s intersectional advocacy approach could serve as a stepping stone to broader transdisciplinary discourse and subsequent reforms.
“[This] moment calls for broader coalition-building beyond psychedelics,” she said, in order to “connect the work being done in the psychedelics field to everything that’s going on in drug policy reform.”
Dr. Mason Marks leads the Project on Psychedelics Law and Regulation at Harvard Law School’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics. He also publishes Psychedelic Week, and formerly served on Oregon’s inaugural Psilocybin Advisory board.
“Most state psychedelic laws have been written behind closed doors … it’s refreshing to see an open-source process.”
Marks has been a notable critic of aspects of the psychedelic regulatory models developed in Oregon and Colorado, based on concerns like equitable access and the influence of for-profit entities. He’s voiced similar skepticism over the measure on Massachusetts’ ballot this fall. But he sees the Washington campaign differently.
“Reach WA’s proposal appears to be the product of a genuine collaborative effort to draft psychedelic legislation,” he told Filter. “Instead of rushing grassroots stakeholders to weigh in, as one often sees in state psychedelic politics, [REACH WA] took their time over the course of many months.”
“[While] most state psychedelic laws have been written behind closed doors … it’s refreshing to see an open-source process,” he continued, “where [REACH’s leadership] requested feedback on [the measure] over an extended period at public meetings and asynchronously through Google Docs.”
It is too early to make any bold predictions on the fate of the Natural Psychedelics and Supportive Services Act, if and when it’s put to Washington State voters. But the organizers’ optimism is palpable, for what they described in a statement to Filter as a “best-case scenario for psychedelic medicine in the US … where these natural substances are integrated into our health care system in a way that prioritizes accessibility, equity, and the preservation of traditional practices.”
What they hope for, they continued, “would involve widespread decriminalization, affordable access to therapy, and a legal framework that prevents monopolization.”
Some groundbreaking aspects to both REACH WA’s plan and the way it’s been developed—earning plaudits in a field that is not without its schisms—could point to exciting future directions for the wider movement.
Photograph by Cactu via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 3.0
