Why shrooms advocates won’t be voting to legalize psilocybin in Co.

Come November, Colorado voters will be asked to decide whether to legalize psilocybin and psilocin, psychoactive compounds in magic mushrooms, as well as whether to establish healing centers where the public can access them in a therapeutic context.

But some of the state’s foremost psychedelics advocates are not on board with the measure, known as the Natural Medicine Health Act, and are actively campaigning against it.

That includes Melanie Rose Rodgers, who in 2019 was part of the team that convinced Denver voters to decriminalize the use and possession of shrooms here. Rodgers and others with Decriminalize Colorado, a local chapter of a national organization dedicated to drug reform education, are instead trying to raise support for a competing measure. Initiative 61 would remove criminal penalties for using, growing or possessing psilocybin and other entheogenic plants throughout the state without establishing a legal, regulated market.

Rodgers’ campaign is still collecting signatures in hopes of being included on the November ballot, but whether or not that happens, she will be voting against the Natural Medicine Health Act, which qualified for general election last Thursday.

“I will be a fat ‘no,’” Rodgers said, “and I’m telling my friends about it too.”

The Natural Medicine Health Act, formally known as Initiative 58, would effectively set the stage for a legal mushroom market by tasking state regulators with creating rules around the cultivation, manufacturing, testing, transport, sales and purchase of psilocybin and psilocin. The crux of the proposal focuses on making psychedelics available to Coloradans seeking treatment for mental or emotional ailments and lays the groundwork for a new industry around psychedelics in the state.

Shrooms would not be sold over-the-counter, for example at dispensaries for recreational use, but rather administered in state-licensed facilities staffed by licensed facilitators. If it passes, the measure would also expand decriminalization for possession, use, and gifting these substances statewide.

Given that psilocybin and other psychedelics have yielded promising results in treating depression, PTSD, anxiety among the terminally ill and nicotine addiction in university studies, Initiative 58’s proponents tout it as a new avenue to address the state’s mental health crisis.

But Rodgers and other advocates remain leery of corporate interests behind the measure that they believe are preparing to enter the market to “tax, commodify, make profit” on psilocybin, she said. That concern was the impetus for

Initiative 61, which would codify decriminalization statewide so that folks who possess, cultivate or use psychedelics including psilocybin, mescaline, dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and ibogaine are not violating the law.

Rodgers, Initiative 61’s co-proponent, said it’s a simple change to Colorado law that protects those who have already been using and administering natural medicines safely. It’s not that she is opposed to legalization, but rather Rodgers and her fellow advocates are wary of its effects.

“We decriminalized in Denver only, but now all the sudden two years later after the pandemic there’s this whole chance to legalize, and I have huge concerns over that. One is the amount of out-of-state funding and influence that is driving Initiative 58,” Rodgers said. “It’s opening the floodgates for corporations to come to Colorado to open their bougie life and healing centers.”