Months after Massachusetts voters rejected a ballot question that would permit adults to use and grow certain psychedelic drugs, some state lawmakers have begun proposing bills to legalize psilocybin.
Psilocybin is a hallucinogenic compound that’s derived from some mushroom species. It’s classified as a Schedule I drug, indicating a high likelihood of abuse without serving any safe medical purposes, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Democratic Massachusetts State Rep. Steven Owens said the earlier referendum was unsuccessful because its measures were too “wide ranging.”
“What was on the ballot last year was something that is a bit more expansive than people were comfortable with,” he said.
Rep. Owens filed a bill that would legalize psilocybin as a treatment for conditions like posttraumatic stress disorder. He said the bill is a more tailored measure for helping individuals with PTSD, such as veterans, access psychedelic treatment.
“My goal is to just continue the conversation around the decriminalization in a much more narrow, more targeted way, and really just to honor the people who have told me how that treatment has helped them,” he said.
Michael Hasselmo, director of Boston University’s Center for Systems Neuroscience, said the hallucinations attributed to psilocybin are caused by the compound’s alterations of neural pathways and serotonin receptors.
“It’s changing your perceptual processes,” he said. “You have certain pathways for processing visual information and other sensory information, and there’s something about what psilocybin is doing that’s changing those pathways.”
Hasselmo said a significant risk of using psychedelics is the activation of schizophrenia in individuals already genetically predisposed to the condition.
“If you have a predisposition towards schizophrenia, taking these drugs can accelerate or enhance your probability of developing schizophrenia,” he said.
Due to these risks, Hasselmo said he voted against the ballot question, as he approves of clinical uses of the compound but disagrees with the compound becoming recreational.
However, he said more medical research should be done on the compound.
“There should be tons of research on it. I think there’s probably thousands of people with mental health issues that can benefit from it, both for PTSD, but also probably depression as well,” he said. “But I would not, at this point, want to make it generally accessible because of those dangers.”
Rep. Owens said he thinks psilocybin decriminalization will follow a similar trajectory to marijuana, which Massachusetts fully legalized in 2016.
“When we legalized cannabis, we started with [permitting] medical [treatments] before we moved on to a broader decriminalization,” he said. “I think that’s probably the model that psilocybin would have to go forward with at this point.”
Kayla Whitt, a junior in the Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation, started using Spravato, an FDA-approved ketamine nasal spray, after consultation with their psychiatrist.
Although ketamine is legal for medical purposes, like treating depression, Whitt said she uses her positive experience with Spravato to talk to others about psychedelics.
“I can use my experience with ketamine to help people understand that [ketamine] is a psychedelic but it is very helpful,” Whitt said. “There’s lots of studies out there that show the effectiveness that ketamine has in treating treatment-resistant depression. That’s one of the things they’re trying to legalize psilocybin for, is so that they can get a deeper understanding of how it helps people with mental health conditions.”
Whitt said she encourages those who oppose the legalization of psychedelics to reassess their views.
“Take your preconceived notions about psychedelics and just take a step back and really examine why you think that way,” Whitt said. “It would be a big missed opportunity for a lot of people if we continue to limit medical professionals based on what the government thinks is acceptable.”
