California State Senate Passes Psychedelic Legalisation Bill
This week, California State Senate approved a landmark psychedelic legalisation bill. The new legislation seeks to remove criminal sanctions for the possession of psychedelics—including LSD, MDMA, Psilocybin, ketamine, DMT and ibogaine for adults 21+. The bill (SB 519) is now on its way to the California State Assembly as a final step before it can become law.
The vote is a big step for the movement to end the War on Drugs, by taking a more health and science-based approach.
The bill has been referred to as a decriminalization measure, but is actually a legalization measure. This would make it legal to possess and share psychedelics, as well as to cultivate naturally occurring psychedelics for personal use (including spores capable of producing psilocybin). Therefore, California's Department of Public Health would need to provide a potential regulatory system to govern safe and equitable access to psychedelics by January 2024.
The senator that championed the bill, Scott Winer, said that he was "thrilled that more and more people are seeing the benefits of decriminalizing psychedelics", following with “it makes no sense to criminalize the use of psychedelics. The War on Drugs has failed us, and criminalizing these substances doesn’t make anyone safer. SB 519 passing the California Senate is a huge milestone for this legislation.”
The bill is part of a wave of psychedelic legal reform, including the work of Denver to decriminalize psilocybin, to the Decriminalize Nature movement across the country from Oakland to Washington D.C., and Oregon’s recent legislation to decriminalize personal use of all drugs.
"As California led the world in cannabis law reform, having been first in the country to pass a medical marijuana law in 1996, so too may the Golden State be a leader in psychedelic legalization. With SB 519 off to the Democrat-controlled Assembly for a final vote, today is nonetheless a milestone in psychedelic history", says psychedelic media company DoubleBlind.
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