Soap company funding effort to legalize psilocybin in Connecticut
A lobbying firm, funded in part by soap company Dr. Bronner’s, is working to get so-called “magic” mushrooms legalized for use in psychiatric treatment in Connecticut.
Washington D.C.-based lobbyists New Approach PAC has paid $14,000 between August and September to local lobbying firm Grossman Solutions for the purposes of “drug policy reform,” according to state filings.
A task force, created by legislation earlier this year, is examining what, if any, value psilocybin-laden mushrooms may have in therapeutic settings. Ben Unger, director of psychedelic policy for New Approach, said Grossman’s role is “to help us engage with Connecticut’s psilocybin work group.”
“New Approach’s mission is to end the senseless and destructive policies of the war on drugs and replace them with policies that prioritize public health, science, healing and community instead of criminalization,” Unger said by email. “We approach this work knowing that the fight to end the drug war is a political fight, and we need to run professional and strategic political campaigns to make progress.”
Unger confirmed that Dr. Bronner’s, a popular soap brand known in part for its verbose labels, is one of New Approach’s funders.
CEO David Bronner, grandson of company founder Emil Bronner, said his goal is to “liberate” psychedelics, specifically legalization of psilocybin for the purposes of therapy and ceremony.
“The passion of my grandfather was to unite spaceship earth,” he said. “We honor that legacy in different ways,” among them “integration of psychedelic healing in medicine and therapy.”
Though he said there are “no magic bullets,” Bronner believes “psychedelic medicine can really help people heal and wake up, and grapple with pressing problems.”
Former state representative Jesse MacLachlan is a member of the task force examining psilocybin, along with several current state legislators, academic researchers, clinicians from Yale, UConn and Midstate Medical Center, and representatives from several state agencies.
“What we’re seeing, and what early signs are showing, is that psychedelic therapy isn’t just a breakthrough, it’s potentially the future of psychiatry and a great leap forward,” MacLachlan said.
So far, conversations within the task force have been “geared toward medical application” as opposed to broad, recreational legalization, he said.
“For me personally, I think the right approach for this subject is to look for a medical framework,” he said. “I don't want to confuse that with recreational utilization.”
One barrier to research has been federal scheduling of psilocybin. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, the substance is considered to have “a high potential for abuse” and “no currently accepted medical treatment use in the U.S.”
Though he said “they certainly can be misused,” MacLachlan believes “the federal scheduling, we will eventually learn, has been misallocated.”
“The big challenge has been helping folks understand that everything we’ve been taught about psychedelics since the 1970s is actually wrong,” he said. “The challenge that we have right now is overcoming decades of misinformation.”
Bronner said his company experienced “windfall profits from being a soap business in the time of COVID,” and budgeted $15 million for advocacy, half of which went toward drug policy reform.
Connecticut is just one of several states in which Unger and Bronner are working to legalize psilocybin for use in treatment and other hallucinogens. Oregon became the first state to legalize psilocybin for that use in specific treatment settings in 2020 with the passage of ballot measure 109.
“We were the major financial backer of Oregon’s 109 measure,” Bronner said.
In a model Bronner said he’d like to see repeated in other states, Oregon’s law legalized the use of psilocybin for treatment, not only as prescribed by a physician. He said he’s also like to see it legalized for ceremonial use.
Connecticut state Rep. Josh Elliott, a Hamden Democrat who proposed the legislation that created the task force, said he hopes for full legalization of psilocybin, as well as other drugs.
Eliot said his goal is “a fully decriminalized model where you have government-sponsored mental health care and physical health care and access to clean drugs.”
“That to me is the pinnacle,” he said. “The best way to do this is probably going drug by drug.”
Bronner said he believes legalization of psilocybin for any purpose will follow a similar track as medical marijuana, with western states like California and Colorado acting first followed by more progressive eastern states, such as Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut.
“I think hearts and minds are changing,” Bronner said. “It’s just a factor of how fast.”
The ballot measure process through which psilocybin was legalized in Oregon, which Unger said “put questions directly to the voters,” can enable such initiatives to pass easier.
“Most East Coast states don’t offer that choice. Either the state has no process for direct voter initiatives, or the one they do have is so restricted that it’s not an option for this kind of policy change,” he said. “That means we have to seek reform through the legislature, instead of from the voters, and that changes what’s politically possible.”