Colorado Voters Could Authorize Natural Medicine-Assisted Treatment. What You Need To Know.
Proposition 122 is on the ballot this November. It would provide adults over 21 with state-regulated access to natural medicine-based treatment; give state health regulators the ability to study, approve, and put guardrails on the use of other natural medicines; and remove criminal penalties for possessing natural medicines, like psilocybin, a research-backed psychedelic medicine with significant therapeutic promise. Here’s what you need to know:
1. Proposition 122 would provide authorization for state-regulated access to natural medicine-based treatment, including psilocybin.
What is Psilocybin? Psilocybin is a natural psychedelic medicine that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has designated a “breakthrough” therapy for depression, which means that its use as part of a treatment plan could produce significantly better outcomes than currently available medications.
Promising research from scientists at institutions like Johns Hopkins University, University of California-San Francisco School of Medicine, and New York University demonstrates that psilocybin can be effective in treating clinical depression, end of life anxiety, and other conditions.
Allan Floyd, a Colorado man diagnosed with terminal spinal cancer, embodies the promise of psilocybin-assisted treatment for end of life anxiety. Here’s Allan in his own words:
“After I received a diagnosis of terminal yet inoperable spinal tumors, my sense of social isolation, depression and end-of-life anxiety began overtaking my waking and sleeping hours. I was prescribed a laundry list of pharmaceuticals but absolutely nothing worked to give me any meaningful relief. With the assistance of a psychiatrist, I began using [psilocybin-assisted therapy] as a last resort … [A terminal diagnosis] was this monstrous, impending doom of death hanging over me … but within two weeks after starting the psilocybin, I didn’t have any more panic attacks, and I haven’t had one since. And that was four years ago.”
How The Rule-Making Process Around Natural Medicine Would Work. The speed of the scientific research has outpaced the creation of a legal and regulatory framework for administering natural medicine-based treatment. Therefore, today, access to natural psychedelic medicines even in controlled settings, remains illegal. The Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA) oversees healthcare regulation in Colorado. Proposition 122 would require DORA to establish guardrails for the safe and effective administration of natural medicine-assisted therapy in consultation with a new expert advisory board, which includes medical and other healthcare professionals, housed within DORA. These regulations would include:
Licensing facilitators to provide natural medicine-assisted therapy, including the qualifications, education, and training requirements that these facilitators must meet.
Licensing the healing centers where facilitators are authorized to administer natural medicine-based treatment.
Overseeing how and who produces and distributes natural medicines that are used in the licensed healing centers by the licensed facilitators administering treatment.
How Access To Natural Medicine-Based Treatment Works.
Preparation Session. You meet with the licensed facilitator to iron out details for how the session itself will unfold. Importantly, this preparatory meeting builds trust and familiarity between you and your provider.
Supervised Administration Session. The treatment is administered in a carefully controlled therapy session — you’re reclining in a dimly-lit, quiet room with a licensed facilitator by your side throughout the session.
Follow-up Integration Session. You and your licensed facilitator will talk about the therapy session, including the effect of the medication on your thoughts and mood. Together, you’ll work to take insights from the session and integrate them into your thinking and daily activities going forward.
2. Proposition 122 would give state health regulators the power to study, authorize, and regulate the use of other natural medicines that medical and other health professionals deemed safe and effective.
Psilocybin is just one example of a research-backed natural medicine with the potential to provide more effective treatment for a range of clinical conditions, such as clinical depression, anxiety, and substance use disorder.
The creation of a regulatory framework for administering natural medicine-assisted treatment, including the presence of an expert advisory board, means that the state can take its time to research, study, and plan out therapeutic programs for additional natural medicines that could be safely and effectively used in Colorado. Using the framework created to administer psilocybin, regulators and medical professionals can guide the use of other natural medicines just like they would for new treatments for diabetes, cancer, or heart conditions.
DORA would not consider authorizing treatment using other natural medicines until at least 2026, meaning that regulators can focus first on—and learn from—establishing safe and effective psilocybin-assisted treatment.
3. Proposition 122 would remove criminal penalties for personal possession of natural medicines, though selling these medicines—in any setting, including retail—would remain illegal.
Criminal penalties for personal use or possession of natural medicines, like psilocybin, are rarely imposed in Colorado. Proposition 122 would make formal what is already the status quo in the state. But it is important to do so to eliminate arbitrary or discriminatory enforcement, and to remove both stigma and fear of imprisonment for people who stand to heal from the use of natural medicine.
Denver, the state’s most populous jurisdiction, effectively decriminalized psilocybin over three years ago. A city-created expert panel recently found that removing criminal penalties for psilocybin “in the City and County of Denver has not since created any significant public health or safety issue in the city.” Notably, roughly a dozen other jurisdictions—including populous cities like Oakland, Seattle and Washington, DC–have similarly removed criminal penalties without negative public health or safety implications.
Pete DePrez, a former sheriff’s deputy from Carbondale, recently described in the Denver Post why he supports Proposition 122: “This measure will make a dramatic difference in the lives of many Coloradans just as it did for me and other first responders and veterans suffering from PTSD. I am a former sheriff’s deputy, SWAT operator and search and rescue coordinator who responsibly uses psilocybin to treat my PTSD effectively. It worked when nothing else did. For many of us suffering from PTSD, depression, anxiety, addiction and other mental health challenges, this medicine has had life-changing—and life-saving—impacts … Many of us are suffering—or know someone suffering—from depression, trauma, anxiety, PTSD and addictions, and [for whom] conventional treatments aren’t working. Proposition 122 gives them access to another tool for recovery.”
4. The most important guardrails already are baked into Proposition 122:
The retail sale of all natural medicines are prohibited.
You must be 21 years-old or older to undergo natural medicine-assisted treatment.
The natural medicine used in therapy can only derive from a state-licensed producer.
State-licensed facilitators must undergo specialized training before obtaining their license.
Natural medicine purchased for facilitated use at a healing center must be used under supervision, and cannot be taken home for unfacilitated personal use.
Facilitated use will be limited to licensed healing centers or under supervision of a licensed facilitator at an approved health care facility or other state-approved location.
