This story by Faith Miller appeared on Colorado Newsline on July 15, 2022. We are sharing it in two parts.
“There’s been a cascade of [psychedelics] reform across the country in local municipalities and other state legislatures, and then of course the success in Oregon in 2020, having been the first mover there at the state level, very much inspired the work that we wanted to create here,” said Kevin Matthews, co-proponent of Initiative 58. “Also, we have the opportunity to really learn some good lessons from Oregon, figure out what’s working there, what’s not working and where we could improve here in Colorado, especially when it comes to implementation.”
Initiative 58, known as the Natural Medicines Health Act, would direct the state to set up licensing programs for “healing centers” where people could access drugs like mushrooms, DMT and mescaline with the help of a trained facilitator.
Other states are shifting their stance on psychedelics, too. In Connecticut, for example, Governor Ned LaMont signed legislation in May that sets up a framework for veterans with PTSD, retired first responders and health care workers to access MDMA and psilocybin at mental health treatment centers.
Not all proponents of psychedelic access are on board with the Natural Medicine Health Act. That includes the group behind an alternative measure, Initiative 61, that’s still collecting signatures.
Initiative 61 grew out of concerns that Initiative 58 would lead to a for-profit industry that would end up making it harder for people who’d traditionally used psychedelic drugs to access them, co-proponent Nicole Foerster told Newsline.
“Once you create a market, and a legal, regulated access framework, what you’re doing is allowing a small amount of people with a lot of money to come in and create a system without any respect for the systems that already do exist,” Foerster said. “There was concern that those people who are using those medicines in an unregulated system won’t be able to access the new system because of barriers to entry (and) price.” That might include indigenous groups, whose traditional use of psychedelics dates back centuries, and people who have used the substances alone or in small groups for healing purposes.
Rather than set up a regulated framework for plant-based psychedelics, Foerster’s group would prefer to remove from state law all criminal penalties for their personal possession and use. Like Initiative 58, Initiative 61 includes psilocybin, psilocyn, DMT, ibogaine and mescaline, and excludes peyote due to concerns about exploitation. Unlike Initiative 58, it does not include a regulatory framework.
Ideally, Foerster said, proponents of Initiative 61 would like to see decriminalization measures move forward slowly at the local level.
“We support a ‘grow, gather, gift’ model, so it means you’re growing your own medicines, you can gift it to other people, but you can’t make a profit off of it,” said Foerster, who is co-founder of the group Decriminalize Nature Boulder County. “We’re not empowering people with corporate interests at this phase of policy making.”
Initiative 61’s proponents have until August 8 to collect petition signatures. If they don’t make the ballot, Foerster said group members plan to keep raising concerns around Initiative 58.
Still, though, Foerster said voters shouldn’t necessarily feel forced to choose between one ballot measure or the other.
“We’re not making people choose a side,” Foerster said. “We’re just really encouraging people to do the work to educate themselves on these policies and where, you know, they might look progressive and good on the outside, but once you get into the details, there’s a lot of foreseeable issues.”
West, the spokesperson for Initiative 58, pushed back on that contention, noting that Initiative 58 aims to balance access with safety and includes an advisory board to foster community input.
“There are good-faith reasons for people to have different approaches, but to imply that this is a program that’s somehow designed with limitations in mind is not a fair accusation,” West said. “Our intent has always been to hit both of those goals of safety and access in the most productive way possible.”
Whether or not the ballot measures pass, Gorelick’s case will serve as an important test for psilocybin use in Colorado. As an ordained rabbi with a nonprofit organization in good standing, Gorelick believes his actions are constitutionally protected. He’s been vocal about his case, speaking with multiple reporters since the charges were filed. He raised upwards of $4,000 for legal fees through GoFundMe and started a Change.org petition asking Denver District Attorney Beth McCann to drop the charges.
“This case violates a Jewish congregation’s right to free exercise of their faith,” the petition states.
But how Gorelick will make that case in Denver district court remains unclear.
“Colorado isn’t necessarily the best state to bring a Religious Freedom Restoration Act argument,” Courtney Barnes, counsel at Feldman Legal Advisors, told Newsline.
Unlike some other states, Colorado doesn’t have a state-level version of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, explained Barnes, a drug policy reform advocate who helped draft Denver’s psilocybin decriminalization measure. The federal act “provides that the federal government may not substantially burden or restrict a person’s exercise of religion, unless it demonstrates that the burden furthers a compelling or extremely important government interest and is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling government interest,” Barnes said.
But Denver’s ordinance “makes the prosecution of psilocybin non-commercial activity by persons 21 years of age and older the city’s lowest law enforcement priority” and prohibits city funds from being used for such enforcement, Barnes noted. “So, with respect to (Gorelick’s) case, if there was no sales going on, everyone was 21-plus, there is an argument that it should be the city’s lowest law enforcement priority and that the city shouldn’t be using funds to prosecute this.”
In essence, Barnes thinks Denver’s ordinance would potentially be more helpful for a case like Gorelick’s than trying to establish a religious exemption.
“As long as the mushrooms were being cultivated in a back room that wasn’t accessible to the public or wasn’t displayed in public, and he wasn’t selling the psilocybin mushrooms, then he has a good argument that the Denver ordinance would cover his activity, regardless of why he was engaging in that activity,” Barnes said. “The spirituality and religious context is helpful to that, but it’s not necessary for the Denver ordinance to apply.”
The last several months have come with challenges for Gorelick and the Sacred Tribe, as investigators interviewed group members about the organization’s religious use of psilocybin and the felony case moved at a “molasses-slow” pace, by Gorelick’s assessment. The charges have affected Gorelick personally, too, leading to some difficult conversations with his parents — who probably didn’t imagine when he went to rabbi school that he’d end up with a felony drug charge, he reflected.
“They understand the kind of religious, spiritual side of things,” Gorelick said of his parents, who brought him up in “Conservadox” Judaism. “They don’t understand how I wound up (at) the tip of the spear of this larger political conversation.”
Some members have decided to leave the group or chosen not to participate in ceremony until the legal scrutiny is over. The group also lost its “spiritual home” when the landlord decided not to renew its lease, he said.
“We have a number of members who decided this wasn’t within their risk tolerance, and I get that,” Gorelick said, noting the threat of criminal conviction is “very real now, where it used to be kind of hypothetical.”
Others, though, have doubled down on their commitment to the Sacred Tribe, saying, “This is who we are as a community, and we’ll continue to be who we are as a community,” Gorelick said. “So whether it’s dinners or breathwork ceremonies, or whatever … they will continue to show up and be a part of this community, as best we can.”
The Pagosa Daily Post welcomes submissions, photos, letters and videos from people who love Pagosa Springs, Colorado. Call 970-903-2673 or email pagosadailypost@gmail.com