Plant Medicine Healing Alliance (PMHA) is organizing Portland, Oregon activists to submit a local resolution. They look to further psychedelic reform beyond legal psilocybin therapy and the decriminalization of psychedelics. Both measures passed in the general election of 2020 and have become enacted across the state.
The mission: to “decriminalize entheogenic plants and fungi in amounts sufficient for growing, gifting, and group ceremony.”
PMHA is actively working with indeginous groups in the area to help craft the measure. The organization looks to affirm the peoples’ “right to cultivate, prepare, possess, or administer entheogenic substances, especially for community healing or a good faith religious or spiritual practice.”
Current Regulation
In Oregon, the current law states the possession of certain psychedelics are decriminalized. This means possession is one of the lowest concerns for police to worry about. For example, someone jaywalks across the street and someone stands on the corner with psilocybin mushrooms. The jaywalker would be the priority for the police officer over the person with mushrooms.
However, the same doesn’t apply for growing, gifting, or group ceremony when it comes to psychedelics. If a person grew mushrooms and they have yet to reach maturity for harvesting, then they would be violating the state law. Also, gifting psychedelics from one person to another is against the law as it only protects an individual, not the act of giving itself.
Finally, any religious ceremonies, such as those performed by indigenous tribes, remain illegal under Oregon state law. It doesn’t matter if a tribe has been conducting a ceremony for centuries, they would be breaking the law and police could arrest and incarcerate them for its use.
PMHA wants to bridge the gap between decriminalized possession and other activities people will do surrounding psychedelics.
Response
Dr. Rachel Knox is a board member of PMHA and also chairs the Equity Subcommittee of the Oregon Psilocybin Advisory Board. She spoke about what PMHA is hoping to do with this measure.
“PMHA centers its recommendations and efforts in equity—health equity—in that it both facilitates and protects access to healing plants and fungi known to be therapeutically beneficial, but protects the people who work with these plant medicines—those who conserve, grow, harvest, prepare or process and administer these plant medicines-for the benefit of their communities,” she said. “By de-prioritizing, it also begins to pave way for the restitution owed to indigenous communities by whom these entheogens are considered sacred, including the opportunity to elevate our wisdom keepers as leaders and respected stewards in this space.”
Moving forward, PMHA hopes to reform psychedelic decriminalization further in Portland. If the response goes over well, then they hope to move on to the full state. Until then, the group says they are excited about the prospects of passage and the change it can bring.
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