As California Goes Part III: Death by Committee

23 May As California Goes Part III: Death by Committee

This this post was originally posted here

The psychedelic field lost a great friend, colleague—and I would say mentor—as Ken Jordan, co-founder and Editorial Director of Lucid New, passed away unexpectedly.

Ken was also the founder of Reality Sandwich, Evolver, and The Alchemist’s Kitchen—media platforms that shared the attributes of sincerity, curiosity and fascination with consciousness and related fields.

The last time I spoke with Ken was on the occasion of recording a podcast, which is aptly titled The Case for Optimism.

I will miss his perspective, insight, and journalistic acumen as this field grows and matures.

 

In October, when California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed California State Senate Bill 58 (which sought to decriminalize the possession, cultivation, consumption, and non-monetary exchange of several psychedelics), he wrote in a public letter to the state senate:

“California should immediately begin work to set up regulated treatment guidelines – replete with dosing information, therapeutic guidelines, rules to prevent against exploitation during guided treatments, and medical clearance of no underlying psychoses. Unfortunately, this bill would decriminalize possession prior to these guidelines going into place, and I cannot sign it. I urge the legislature to send me legislation next year that includes therapeutic guidelines.”

In other words, Newsom asked the California State Senate to recreate the FDA.

In February, when State Senator Scott Weiner (D-San Francisco) reintroduced legislation that the governor had specifically asked for, my gut-level response:

 

Last week, California Senate Bill 1012, The Regulated Psychedelic Facilitators Act and the Regulated Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy Act, a bill that included dosing information, therapeutic guidelines, and rules to prevent exploitation—as requested—died in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Ostensibly, the bill—along with many others—was a victim of budgetary constraints in a tight fiscal landscape, with Senator Weiner saying:

“We’re in a terrible budget year, where all bills with significant costs are at risk. Nevertheless, it’s disappointing for this bill not to move forward.”

However, as I alluded to in Part II of this series on California psychedelic policy, we should not expect to see state-level reform enacted by legislation. Only ballot measures will have any chance of creating ‘Support Adult Use’ or decriminalized home cultivation models.

In fact, of the three substantive state level psychedelic policy reforms so far, two have done so through the ballot (Oregon & Colorado).

The third, Utah—whose psychedelic policy came through legislation—more closely resembles a state-sponsored clinical trial than legalization as it restricts access via medical prescription (MDMA & psilocybin) through two academic-affiliated healthcare systems.

Any other psychedelic-related reform effort that has gone through the legislative process has been killed, shelved, or merely left to a committee tasked with producing a ‘report’.

Previously, I posited that Newsom would not sign such a bill because of his political aspirations, but that wasn’t quite right, as it appears Biden will be the Democratic nominee.

But, the larger dynamic still holds: any state legislation that creates access to psychedelics inherently undermines and usurps not only the DEA but the FDA as well, and lawmakers—despite their stated values—will be unwilling to sign off on it.

In other words, the revolution will be medicalized.

A central thesis of this newsletter since the beginning has been that psychedelics are not cannabis 2.0.

As noted in Part II of As Goes California:

Too many people view this whole psychedelic thing as “Cannabis 2.0,” but this is wrong in two meaningful ways.

1. Very few people are imprisoned for psychedelics, compared to cannabis.
2. Because of the more extensive scientific literature that psychedelics have compared to cannabis, the medical establishment has been—and will be—more involved in the on-ramping of psychedelics by orders of magnitude.

If you are surprised that a bipartisan supported bill that would enact state-sanctioned psychedelic services didn’t make it through—despite the governor’s explicit request—it is because your model of the psychedelic movement is too closely predicated on the cannabis movement.

The reality is—and I still find it hard to believe myself—psychedelics are pharmaceutical products.

For various reasons, psychedelic compounds—MDMA, psilocybin, LSD, etc.— have had significantly less bureaucratic red tape than cannabis for clinical research.

As a result, there are now hundreds of clinical and pre-clinical psychedelic drug programs aiming for FDA approval.

Meanwhile, the cannabis market is basically indistinguishable from the tobacco and alcohol industries.

In summary, here is my basic thesis:

The body of scientific literature on psychedelics, the centrality of set, setting, and support, and the intensely altered state they create all conspire to make it categorically different than cannabis and more akin to medical procedures like surgery or chemotherapy.

For these reasons and the sheer power the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries wield in government, few, if any, lawmakers will seek to undermine this behemoth by creating a parallel medical system that uses federally illegal substances.

While it is true that budgetary and fiscal constraints killed Bill 1012, it is also a rather convenient scapegoat.

As stated in the footnotes, this is an observation, not a preference.