Jul. 22—As Oregon drafts regulations to license psilocybin for therapeutic use, Clatsop County is weighing whether to follow other counties and cities across the state and ask local voters in November to approve a temporary two-year ban.
Voters in Oregon passed Measure 109 in November 2020 to legalize psilocybin — also known as "magic mushrooms" — to treat depression, anxiety, trauma and other mental health challenges for people 21 and older at licensed service centers.
Oregon is the first state in the country to allow the drug. The ballot measure passed in Clatsop County 55% to 45%.
The Oregon Health Authority plans to issue final regulations in late December, shortly before the state begins accepting licensing applications in early January from aspiring manufacturers and people looking to dispense psilocybin.
Counties and cities have the option of asking voters to approve a two-year moratorium on psilocybin manufacturing and service centers or a permanent ban. Local governments can also adopt time, place and manner restrictions that go beyond the state's regulations.
A temporary freeze would give local governments time to review the issue.
County commissioners will discuss a two-year moratorium in unincorporated areas at a meeting next week. The Seaside City Council is also moving toward asking voters for a moratorium.
Warrenton plans to craft time, place and manner restrictions, treating psilocybin in the development code the same as the city does marijuana.
"Time, place, manner restrictions just provide an avenue for what is technically legal," Mayor Henry Balensifer said, adding that it also allows the city to collect tax revenue on the sale of the product, "like we do with marijuana, without having to have the unfettered loss of commercial space to pop-up drug stores, basically."
Local governments have to move quickly to qualify measures for the November election.
"The clock is ticking to put anything on the ballot," County Manager Don Bohn said at a work session on Wednesday.
County Counsel Joanna Lyons-Antley recommended the moratorium, which commissioners could lift before the two years is up if the county works out the local restrictions first.
Psilocybin, like marijuana, remains a Schedule 1 drug under federal law. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, however, has designated psilocybin a breakthrough therapy for forms of depression. Studies suggest the drug can also help treat other disorders.
The conversation around psilocybin comes while Oregon communities deal with the consequences of Measure 110, which voters also approved in November 2020. That measure decriminalized drugs such as heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine and sought to divert money usually budgeted for enforcing drug laws, as well as tax revenue from marijuana sales, to addiction treatment. But little money has reached treatment providers and few addicts have voluntarily pursued treatment.
Overdoses, meanwhile, continue to rise statewide, driven in part by the presence of the synthetic opioid fentanyl in illicit drugs.
County Commissioner Lianne Thompson said the county is in no hurry to replicate the unintended consequences of Measure 110.
Sheriff Matt Phillips, who opposed measures 110 and 109, told commissioners on Wednesday that, at minimum, a moratorium on psilocybin would be the right thing to do.
He shared statistics from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health for Oregon residents 12 and older. In the 2021 survey, Oregon ranked first in the nation in the number of residents with an illicit drug use disorder in the previous year.
"Oregon has a long history of having very permissive attitudes toward substance abuse," Phillips said. "And while I understand the philosophy of reducing stigma to increase access to treatment, we're building this negative feedback loop where we're basically, in my mind ... reducing the barriers to starting a substance abuse problem to build an industry to correct it at the end.
"And if we really want to address the problem, we wouldn't have such a permissive attitude toward substances everywhere and the message that it's OK to be altered all the time," he continued, "especially if you're raising a family. You see that all the time in law enforcement."
R.J. Marx and Ethan Myers contributed to this report.
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