The Somerville City Council passed a resolution on July 11 to endorse the “Natural Psychedelic Substances Act,” an upcoming proposition on the November ballot that would legalize the usage of psychedelics in Massachusetts. If enough voters vote “yes” to the act, which will appear as Question 4 on their ballots, it would allow adults 21 and older to legally grow, possess and use specific amounts of psychedelics that have been shown to have therapeutic benefits for certain mental health conditions.
In recent years, Somerville has emerged as a leader in the fight to legalize psychedelics in Massachusetts, voting unanimously in January 2021 to decriminalize entheogenic plants and fungi. The city is the first in Massachusetts to endorse the “Natural Psychedelic Substances Act,” introduced to the council by Councilor Willie Burnley Jr. The Cambridge City Council followed suit on Aug. 5.
The act intends to decouple psychedelics from the black market and provide safe and supervised access with appropriate regulation and taxation. Under the measure, a regulated framework would allow the supervised use of psychedelics at licensed therapy facilities throughout the state. While the bill does not allow for retail shops or storefronts that sell psychedelics — meaning that individuals cannot take the products home — it removes criminal penalties for limited personal use by adults 21 and older.
Proponents of the measure argue that psychedelic therapy contains tremendous potential for those dealing with conditions including depression, anxiety, OCD, PTSD, addiction and cluster headaches.
“Using psilocybin was life-changing for me and allowed me to take control of my life from mental illness,” Graham Moore, educational outreach director for Massachusetts for Mental Health Options, explained. Massachusetts for Mental Health Options is responsible for leading the “Yes on 4” campaign that collected enough signatures to put Question 4 on the November ballot.
Jamie Morey, the Community Engagement Director for MMHO and the founder of grassroots advocacy group Parents for Plant Medicine, shared her sentiments on the power of psychedelics, particularly her experience with psilocybin, a compound found in certain species of mushrooms.
“It was profound in a way that’s hard to describe in words,” Morey said. “It feels like a factory reset or 20 years of therapy in a day.”
While there is much anecdotal evidence around the effectiveness of psychedelics in treating mental health, concrete research has lagged behind as a result of the drugs’ Schedule I classification.
“We know which receptors these drugs bind to. We know some limited information about how they affect metabolism of different parts of the brain, but we’re really at a very preliminary understanding of how they actually work,” said Mason Marks, a visiting law professor at Harvard Law School who leads the Project on Psychedelics Law and Regulation at Harvard’s Petrie-Flom Center. “But I do think that, after a while, you read so many reports, you hear so many stories from people, you do think, “Okay, there’s something to this.”
Many in the mental health community are optimistic about psychedelics’ therapeutic potential. Tahlia Harrison is an Oregon-based therapist who has had first-hand experience working with patients after the state began implementing psilocybin-based therapy in 2023.
“The overall research is finding that what psychedelics do is … [allow you to] view your experiences or your trauma in a way that is more open,” Harrison said.
And while most in the psychedelics community in Massachusetts agree on the general principles of decriminalization and legalization, there has been disagreement over the exact substance of the bill, with some arguing it would corporatize plant medicine to an extent where services would be out of reach for those in lower income brackets. In Oregon, the cost of legal psilocybin-based treatment can surpass $2,000 for a single session.
“If psilocybin isn’t affordable, then it’s not really legal, right?” argued James Davis, the co-founder of Bay Staters for Natural Medicine, an organization that opposes the Natural Psychedelic Substances Act in its current form. “If people can’t afford something, it’s a stretch to call it legal.”
Another issue with the bill some have raised is found in Section 3a, which stipulates the creation of a Massachusetts Natural Psychedelic Substances Commission to oversee the implementation of the new law. Commissioners only need to move to Massachusetts within the 90 days following their appointment.
“I think Massachusetts voters should be offended that people could literally be appointed having never set foot in the state,” Marks said. “[The lack of a requirement to be from Massachusetts] was clearly put in there so that someone can bring in their chosen people that they want to work with. Clearly, there is no shortage of intellectual capacity in Massachusetts.”
Moore refuted these arguments by pointing to the precedent set in Oregon.
“Appointees running the program is very standard,” Moore asserted. “In Oregon, the public health authority that runs the program is still a government agency with leaders not directly elected by the public, so I don’t think it’s so different than what we have here.”
In regards to the financial argument against the measure, Somerville City Councillor Jesse Clingan, who endorsed the 2021 resolution to decriminalize entheogenic plants, urged against letting the pursuit of a better bill undermine efforts to enshrine this one into law.
“It’s like baby steps, right?” Clingan suggested. “Don’t make perfect the enemy of the good. This is a move in the right direction.”
When asked about the best ways to work to break the stigma surrounding the usage of psychedelics, Morey commented on the power of open conversations on the issue.
“I think it’s just people speaking up and telling their stories, and not being afraid,” she said. “I think that’s what’s going to change the conversation — people being brave enough to have the conversation.”
