A recent review of Oregon’s psilocybin therapy program brings up some of the most obvious points about the initiative, approved by voters just a handful of years ago: High-earning individuals are often the ones accessing the program. Many of them come from out of state to do so. People are accessing the program not just for psychological concerns like anxiety or depression, but also for general wellness. And with the program so new and the bar set relatively high for reporting on participants’ mental health concerns, not enough data is out there to be sure that the facilities offering these programs are doing it safely and not letting in people for whom psychedelics could be dangerous. Add in some public confusion about what’s legal and what’s not (“mushroom” gummies and other products with questionable ingredients have been showing up on store shelves in recent years) and there’s still plenty to sort out.
But tell us all something we couldn’t have predicted about a program that is less than a decade old.
When Oregonians in 2020 voted in favor of launching the nation’s first psilocybin therapy program, the same set of concerns was talked about then. As the program rolled out and facilities began to open, that continued: Would the extensive fees and setup costs for the facilities cause them to be too expensive for people in need to access? Wouldn’t this make Oregon — long a state that’s experimented with drug policy — even more of a tourist destination for drug enthusiasts? And what were the guardrails in place to make the program safe?
But just because the average person in Oregon could intuit these common concerns doesn’t mean that there isn’t a need to process them and codify them in a more formal way. Articles like the one just produced in the International Journal of Drug Policy might tell us something of what we already know — and yet, if they get us one step closer to resolving the initial concerns, by getting policymakers to tweak the formula and make the program cheaper and more accessible, for example, then we’ll take it. Studies that analyze efficacy and safety at scale, like the one currently underway at Oregon Health & Science University, could help some people — namely, the people who make the laws that the Oregon Health Authority and the therapy centers adhere to — understand what many people already know: that psilocybin can and does help a lot of people. The more people it helps, in theory, the more people it has the potential to help in the future.
We need more research to legitimize the issue in the public square, and to ensure products are safe and facilitators are ready for issues that arise. Based on the data we already have, Oregon’s experiment into mushroom as therapy seems to be going well — except for all the issues that we already knew about.
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