Every entry carries which of the three words it actually is. That is the
whole point.
New here? Legalization, decriminalization
and deprioritization are three different things, and almost every story you read confuses them.
Five minutes and you can read this subject correctly forever.
Compass says it will file its psilocybin application within two weeks and still targets a launch in the first half of 2027
In its third-quarter results on November 3, Compass Pathways said the final submission of its new drug application for COMP360 in treatment-resistant depression is nearing completion and will be filed in the next two weeks. The company reported $444.0 million in cash and said it is working toward a launch in the first half of 2027, if approved. It points to the national priority voucher it received in April, which it says could shorten review to one to two months. Those are company projections: the application has not been filed, the FDA has not accepted or approved anything, and psilocybin remains Schedule I.
Psychedelic Alpha reports that Usona has completed its psilocybin application for depression
Psychedelic Alpha reported on November 2 that Usona Institute, a nonprofit, has completed a new drug application to the FDA for psilocybin in major depressive disorder. The report relies on sources: Usona declined to comment, and neither the company nor the FDA has confirmed a submission. Usona holds a national priority voucher, which is meant to bring a decision in about two months, and the sources say it is working with the agency on a risk evaluation and mitigation strategy. No application has been accepted, nothing is approved, and psilocybin is still Schedule I.
FDA approves NRx's preservative-free generic ketamine, while its bid to pull rival products stays pending
The FDA approved an abbreviated application from NRx Pharmaceuticals for a preservative-free ketamine, which the company has called KETAFREE. As a generic it carries the same label as Ketalar, approved in 1970, which covers anesthesia only, so this is not an approval for depression. NRx's chief executive said the only difference is that it contains no benzethonium chloride, a preservative used in some multidose vials. Still pending at the agency are NRx's citizen petition to remove preservative-containing ketamine products and its separate application for a preservative-free IV ketamine for depression and suicidality.
About 610 comments filed on FDA's psychedelics docket, and a Psychedelic Alpha review finds them mostly supportive but divided
The public comment period on the FDA's psychedelics docket, opened in July alongside a Part 15 public hearing, closed on October 5. Psychedelic Alpha counted 610 submissions, just under 500 of them distinct, with nearly 100 template-style entries and 14 duplicates. Its author, who says Claude was used to sort the comments, describes the overall tone as mostly supportive with some division, including a coordinated opposition. This is one outlet's own tally, not an FDA finding. The agency has not published a summary of the comments or announced any policy change from the docket.
Mouse study: psilocybin quickly grows new connections between brain cells, but in healthy mice they fade over three weeks
Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, reported in Nature Neuroscience (published October 15, announced October 22) that psilocybin increased the formation of new dendritic spines, the tiny contact points between neurons, within 24 hours in mice. In healthy mice the extra connections returned toward baseline over about three weeks. In mice put under chronic stress the increase was larger and the loss of existing connections was reduced. The team found that the serotonin 2A receptor on a specific class of cortical neurons was needed for the growth but not for a behavior used as a proxy for hallucinations. This was done in mice, with a head twitch standing in for a trip, and it does not show that people grow lasting new connections or that this is how psilocybin helps depression.
The VA says it has picked ten sites for psychedelic treatment and would start treating veterans as soon as a drug is approved
Andrew Gradison of the Department of Veterans Affairs told the Psychedelic Healthcare Forum in New York that the VA has selected ten sites so far, chosen partly for their experience with psychedelic clinical trials, and has started a community of practice for them. He said about 2.1 million of the veterans who use VA care have PTSD, major depression or treatment-resistant depression, that the VA would begin treating patients immediately if a drug became available in early 2027, and that treating more than 1,000 veterans in the first year will be a challenge because demand will exceed supply. He described the pace as slower than veterans would like. No psychedelic drug is approved, the sites were not named, and nobody is being treated under this plan yet.
A cost watchdog opens its review of Compass Pathways' psilocybin, with a vote set for May 2027
The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, an independent group whose value assessments are used by insurers and drug buyers, announced it will assess COMP360, Compass Pathways' synthetic psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression. It posted a draft scope on 21 October, is taking public comment until 10 November, and expects a revised scope around 18 November. Its New England panel is scheduled to discuss the evidence and vote in May 2027. This is a review of cost and value, not of safety, and it is not a decision about approval: the drug is not approved, the FDA application is not complete, and no price has been set.
A small Parkinson's study finds inflammation markers fell after psilocybin, with no control group
Researchers at UCSF, with Columbia University, measured five inflammation-related signaling molecules and a marker of mitochondrial stress in the blood of 12 people with Parkinson's disease before and after two psilocybin sessions. Inflammation markers were significantly lower than baseline and stayed lower one month after the last dose, while the mitochondrial marker improved right after dosing but not at longer follow-up. The analysis, published in JAMA Psychiatry, comes from a pilot safety study with no control group in which everyone knew they were getting the drug. The lead researcher called it an initial biological signal to investigate, and the findings need confirming in larger controlled trials before anyone can say psilocybin treats inflammation or Parkinson's.
A low dose of psilocybin calms fighting fish, and the researchers say that is all it shows so far
Researchers at Acadia University and the University of British Columbia soaked mangrove rivulus fish in water containing a low dose of psilocybin for 20 minutes, then watched them face off against a rival. Treated fish launched fewer high-energy charges, the attack-like escalations, while the low-key displays that keep a social encounter going were largely unchanged. The study, published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, used a single dose and a single short exposure, in fish. The authors say plainly that it is not evidence of a treatment for aggression in people, and nobody should read it as one; what it offers is a clean model for asking how the drug acts on conflict behaviour, which is a question the book cares about.
An Iowa ayahuasca church gets a state registration backed by a sealed DEA agreement
On 5 October the Iowa Board of Pharmacy agreed to issue the Iowaska Church of Healing a state certificate of registration, the step needed before federal permits can follow. The board said a memorandum of agreement between the church and the DEA, which Justice Department lawyers disclosed in June and which remains sealed, effectively gives the church federal authority to import ayahuasca paste and make the tea in bulk. The state certificate carries a year of probation and requires the church to report certain adverse medical events. The reporting does not confirm that the DEA has issued final registrations or permits, DMT is still Schedule I, and nothing in the arrangement extends to any other group.
Eli Lilly's neuroscience chief says the company wants to study and improve ibogaine
Carole Ho, president of Lilly's neuroscience unit, told the Psychedelic Healthcare Forum in New York on 15 October that Lilly is interested in research aimed at improving ibogaine's profile, the drug's heart risk being its best-known problem. It is the first time the company has said so in public, and it comes a month after Lilly closed its $2.8 billion purchase of AtaiBeckley, whose lead drugs are a 5-MeO-DMT nasal spray and a DMT formulation, not ibogaine. No study, partnership, investment or timeline was announced. Ibogaine remains Schedule I, the FDA's request for comment on how to design an ibogaine trial is still open until 20 November, and a stated interest is not a program.
Compass Pathways sketches a psilocybin launch for early 2027, with a safety program and a slow start
At the STAT Summit in Boston, Compass Pathways CEO Kabir Nath said the company expects to finish its rolling FDA application for COMP360, its synthetic psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression, this quarter, and aims to launch early next year if the FDA approves it. He expects the agency to require a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy, is training providers now, and described the plan as going slow before going fast, since a bad early experience could set the whole field back. In the Phase 3 program about a quarter of patients had a meaningful response after one supervised session and about 40 percent after a second dose three weeks later. The application is not yet complete, the drug is not approved, and no price has been set; Nath pointed to Johnson & Johnson's Spravato as the reference point and said talks with insurers and Medicare are ongoing.
Researchers posing as clients find Oregon's psilocybin centers are screening people properly
A team from Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Missouri phoned 15 of Oregon's 22 active psilocybin service centers posing as prospective clients with depression and either a drinking problem or a family history of psychosis. The findings, published October 12 in Health Affairs Scholar, show every center asked about psychiatric history, medications and suicidal thoughts before recommending anything, nearly every one flagged medications that should not be mixed with psilocybin, and none offered take-home or unsupervised use. The median price of a session was $1,900 and not one center took insurance. This is a study of scripted phone calls, not of what happens inside a session, and seven centers could not be reached at all. Four of the 26 licensed centers had already closed before the calls began.
Brain scans show intensive breathwork produces a psychedelic-like state with no drug at all
Researchers at the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim put 30 experienced breathwork practitioners in an MRI scanner while they did high-ventilation breathing, and presented the results at the ECNP Congress in Munich on 10 October. Blood flow through the brain's grey matter fell by about 45 percent, participants described an oceanic sense of connection they compared to a moderate-to-high dose of LSD or psilocybin with weaker visuals, and the stronger the altered state the bigger the shift in the default mode network, the brain's self-referential circuit. The team says the state is driven by changed communication between networks rather than by low blood flow alone. It is a small, uncontrolled study of people who already do this for a living, the researchers call it preliminary, and nobody has tested whether it helps a patient. The point for this book is older than the science: the altered state does not require a molecule.
New Zealand lines up a legal supply of pharmaceutical MDMA for its two authorized psychiatrists
Rua Bioscience, a listed company in Tairawhiti, signed a distribution and licence agreement with Canada's PharmAla Biotech to import and sell PharmAla's pharmaceutical-grade MDMA in New Zealand, in 40 mg capsules made to GMP standards. The deal follows Medsafe's September 4 decision to let two psychiatrists prescribe MDMA for PTSD, which made New Zealand the second country after Australia to allow it. No patient has been treated yet, no shipment date has been set, and the companies still have regulatory and quality steps to finish with Medsafe before the first consignment moves. Patient numbers will be modest at first, by the companies' own description.
USC launches an ARPA-H-funded trial of psilocybin with mindfulness training for depression
Researchers at USC's Keck School of Medicine announced a trial of psilocybin therapy for depression, backed by up to $4 million from ARPA-H. About 80 adults in Los Angeles with no prior psychedelic or meditation experience will be randomized to psilocybin therapy alone or psilocybin therapy plus an eight-week mindfulness and compassion program, with each person getting two psilocybin sessions about a month apart. The idea that mindfulness strengthens psilocybin's effect is a hypothesis this trial is meant to test, not something it has shown. The announcement is a university press release: it says the team will recruit, gives no start date, and psilocybin is not an approved treatment for depression.
A biotech company sends the FDA its wish list for non-hallucinogenic psychedelic drugs
Clearmind Medicine, a Nasdaq-listed company developing non-hallucinogenic compounds for alcohol use disorder, said it submitted recommendations to the FDA's public docket on the future therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs. It asks for guidance on therapies that could be taken without supervision, faster pathways such as Breakthrough designation, and pilot programs with the VA and other agencies. This is one company lobbying in its own interest, in a docket where written comments closed on October 5. The FDA has not adopted any of it, and none of Clearmind's compounds is approved.
The FDA asks the public how an ibogaine trial should be designed
The FDA opened a request for information on how to design early-phase clinical trials of ibogaine, a plant-derived compound studied for opioid use disorder and PTSD. It asks for comment on dose selection and escalation, the care setting, safety monitoring, who should be eligible, and when a trial should be stopped, and it ties the work to the April 2026 executive order on serious mental illness. Comments are open until November 20, 2026. This is a request for ideas, not an approval: no ibogaine trial has been cleared under it, nobody has been dosed because of it, and ibogaine remains a Schedule I drug.
New Mexico airs its draft psilocybin rules, and a landlord clause draws the fire
The New Mexico Department of Health held a public hearing in Santa Fe on October 2 on its draft rules for the medical psilocybin program, which the state still hopes to launch in December 2026, a year ahead of the law's deadline. Thirteen of roughly 30 speakers objected to a provision that would require renters receiving at-home therapy to get a landlord's signed acknowledgment, among them the bill's lead sponsor, Senator Jeff Steinborn, and the chair of the program's advisory board. The department says the clause has not been a problem so far and will weigh about 80 written comments before finalizing anything. Nobody has been treated yet: one producer has been approved out of five applicants, testing labs open next, and clinician and facilitator permits cannot open until the rules are final.
A bipartisan caucus in Congress sketches a federal roadmap, and it is still just a roadmap
The Congressional Psychedelics Advancing Therapies (PATH) Caucus, co-chaired by Reps. Jack Bergman and Lou Correa, released a report built from input gathered across clinicians, researchers, veterans and tribal leaders. It calls for federal therapy guidelines, provider credentialing pathways, a national adverse-event monitoring system and insurance frameworks for psychedelic-assisted care. That is a set of recommendations, not a law. No bill has come out of it, no regulatory framework exists, and the report itself notes that the FDA and DEA are currently moving in different directions rather than together.
California commits $4.7 million to psychedelic research for veterans
As part of a veterans package Governor Newsom signed on 28 September, Assembly Bill 113 puts $4.7 million behind a federally registered clinical trial of psychedelic-assisted therapy for veterans with PTSD that has not responded to standard treatment, anchored at a University of California campus and run jointly by the state's health care services and veterans affairs departments. The substances named are psilocybin, MDMA, ketamine, DMT and ibogaine. Money is not medicine yet: the advisory council still has to be convened before any trial can start, no therapy has been approved, and no veteran has been dosed under this program.
Oregon backs off a fee hike that was squeezing its psilocybin service centers
The Oregon Health Authority withdrew proposed rules that would have doubled annual licensing fees for psilocybin service centers and ended the discounts for veterans and low-income clients, after operators warned the increase would push more centers to hand back their licenses. Roughly half of the state's 39 licensed centers have already closed or surrendered their licenses. The fee hike is dead, but the agency's own paperwork shows a shortfall of about three to four million dollars, and nobody has said yet whether the legislature will cover it or whether a product tax increase comes next. The money problem is not solved, only postponed.
Compass Pathways says its FDA filing for psilocybin lands by the end of the year
Compass Pathways told BioPharma Dive it expects to finish its FDA application for COMP360, its synthetic psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression, in the fourth quarter of 2026. CEO Kabir Nath described a small, carefully managed launch if the drug is approved, leaning on the roughly 8,500 interventional psychiatry clinics that grew up around Johnson & Johnson's ketamine spray Spravato. Worth being precise about what this is: a company's plan to file. COMP360 is not approved, nobody has been treated with it outside a trial, and the FDA cannot rule on an application that is not yet complete.
A federal research agency opens funding for the first US ibogaine trials
ARPA-H, the health department's fast-track research agency, held a Proposers' Day in Washington for ASCENT-IBO, a new funding call meant to produce the first ibogaine trials in the country with the federal authorization to actually run. No such trial exists today, despite decades of anecdotal reports from clinics abroad. Applicants have until mid-October to submit study plans, aimed first at basic safety before any larger trial. This is a call for proposals, not a trial underway, and ibogaine stays Schedule I regardless of the outcome.
A new compound chases psilocybin's effect in the brain, minus the trip
Xylo Bio dosed its first volunteers in Australia in a Phase 1 trial of XYL-1001, a lab-made molecule designed to activate the same brain receptor psilocybin does without producing hallucinations. The idea, if it survives testing, is a drug that skips the eight-hour supervised session entirely. This is a safety study in healthy volunteers, the first of many required steps, and nobody with depression has taken it yet. Several other companies are chasing the same bet quietly right now.
LSD clears its second Phase 3 trial for a common anxiety disorder
Definium Therapeutics reported that a second late-stage trial of DT120, its tablet form of LSD, again beat placebo for generalized anxiety disorder, with scores improving within days of a single dose. It is the third positive Phase 3 readout this year for the drug, following results in depression and an earlier anxiety trial, and the company says it will meet with the FDA before filing for approval sometime in 2027. None of that makes LSD legal, available, or even approved. It is one drug, in one company's pipeline, still years from a pharmacy shelf if it gets there at all.
A drug company sets up a dedicated ibogaine subsidiary in Texas
Psyence BioMed formed Texas Ibogaine Research Corporation, a new US subsidiary meant to hold the rights to a pharmaceutical-grade version of ibogaine and eventually carry it through federal drug trials. The licensing deal for that ibogaine supply is not finalized, so there is no drug, no trial and no timeline yet, just a corporate structure built to chase one. It follows the same federal research push behind April's executive order, ARPA-H's new funding call and the University of Miami's donated research file. Ibogaine remains Schedule I regardless of any of it.
The FDA opens the floor on supervised psychedelic therapy
The agency set 14 September for a four-hour public hearing at its White Oak campus in Maryland on the future therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs in supervised and supportive settings, with roughly eighty speakers signed up for two minutes apiece. The Federal Register notice is unusually specific about what the agency will not hear: nothing on scheduling, nothing on legalization or decriminalization, nothing on ceremonial or personal use. The four topics on the table are provider training, patient safety, access and data collection. Worth knowing what a hearing is and is not. The agency is listening, not deciding, and not one of the medicines under discussion is approved.
FDA staff publish their psychedelics framework in a medical journal
Four agency staffers wrote a commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine describing what they call the FDA's new framework for psychedelic drugs. It walks through the breakthrough therapy designations already granted, the rolling and priority reviews those designations unlock, and the final clinical trial guidance the agency issued in July. It also says, in plain words, that psychedelic therapies remain investigational and that the approach is still evolving. A commentary approves nothing and binds nobody. What it does is tell every drug developer in the country exactly how the agency is thinking, days before it opened the floor to public comment.
A second psilocybin dose stretches relief to a full year, Compass says
Compass Pathways reported that patients with hard-to-treat depression who got a second psilocybin session after not fully responding to the first kept improving out to 52 weeks, an average 13-point drop in depression scores from where they started. This phase of the trial was open-label, meaning everyone knew what they received, and it only included patients who relapsed or fell short the first time. Retreatment is the question every psilocybin drugmaker still has to answer: what happens when one session is not enough. This is one company's early answer, not a settled one.
New Zealand clears two psychiatrists to prescribe MDMA for PTSD
Medsafe, the country's medicines regulator, approved two psychiatrists to prescribe and administer MDMA for post-traumatic stress disorder, always alongside psychotherapy. Note what this is not. No product was approved and nothing was rescheduled. It is the same narrow authorised-prescriber door New Zealand first opened for psilocybin in 2025, widened by two doctors. One of the pair said his approval took thirteen months and that his protocol tops out near fifteen patients a year, at roughly fifteen thousand New Zealand dollars a course, none of it publicly funded. Two doctors is not a rollout. It is a door.
A mouse study finds psilocybin might prevent chemo nerve damage before it starts
Researchers at MD Anderson found that giving mice psilocybin before chemotherapy prevented the numbness, pain and cold sensitivity the treatment usually causes, even across repeated chemo cycles, without blunting chemo's effect on the tumor. The mechanism traces to how the compound preserves energy transport inside nerve fibers, work published in the journal Science. None of this has been tested in a cancer patient. A Phase 2 trial called NeuroGuard is next, to see whether the effect holds in humans.
Oregon folds its psilocybin regulator into the medical cannabis program
The merger announced over the summer completed on 1 September. Oregon Psilocybin Services and the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program now run as a single unit, the Medical Cannabis and Psilocybin Section, under one manager. The state opened a twenty-one-day comment period the same day on proposed licensing fee increases, closing 21 September, with revised rules due to take effect 1 January 2027. Nothing changed about who may lawfully use psilocybin in Oregon. This is the first state to legalize finding out what it costs to keep the doors open.
A Johns Hopkins pilot finds that THC can pass for psilocybin
Four adults were given psilocybin, one of two doses of THC, or a placebo, lying on a couch in eye shades with music playing. Every one of them identified the placebo and the psilocybin correctly. A 25 milligram dose of THC, though, was rated as feeling more like a classic psychedelic than like cannabis. It is four people, the authors call it preliminary, and the funding came from a foundation started by a cannabis company. The reason it matters anyway: psychedelic trials are weakened because participants can always tell who got the drug, and a comparator that genuinely fools people would make every result that follows much harder to dismiss.
United StatesResearchCalifornia, Colorado & Michigan
People living under psychedelic decriminalization say it is working
A peer-reviewed survey of 163 people in decriminalized cities and states found 84 percent reported the policy made things safer, not more dangerous. Fewer than 6 percent reported anything getting worse, and not one person said their legal risk went up. It is a small, self-selected sample, and the researchers say so themselves.
A federal health agency tells states: start planning now
SAMHSA published a report urging state mental health agencies to build oversight frameworks, credentialing rules and Medicaid plans before the FDA approves any psychedelic drug, not after. It also flagged a real legal tension: a state that allows psychedelic therapy ahead of FDA approval puts prescribers where state and federal law disagree. No drug has been approved yet. This is homework, not a green light.
University of Miami hands its 1994 ibogaine research file to the government
The University of Miami gave the federal government the 1994 FDA filing behind the country's oldest ibogaine research program, choosing to make it public rather than sell it to a private drug company. MAPS, which helped fund that original 1990s research, released a companion safety brief the same month covering three decades of newer findings on the drug's cardiac risks. No trial began and nothing was approved. It is a research foundation now open to anyone building on it, not a green light.
The state's Department of Health began accepting applications from producers who want to grow psilocybin mushrooms for the Medical Psilocybin Program. The law legalizing therapeutic use passed last year; this is the state building the supply chain behind it, permits, zoning and safety inspections included. No patient has been dosed yet. New Mexico is aiming to open the program by the end of 2026, a year ahead of its original deadline.
HB26-1325 passed both chambers on 12 May with bipartisan support and took effect in August. It authorizes up to five ibogaine research sites under the Behavioral Health Administration, folds ibogaine into the state's natural medicine structure, and requires benefit-sharing agreements with Gabon, where iboga is grown. That last clause is close to unprecedented.
The DEA moves to schedule 7-OH, and explicitly spares traditional kratom
Seven-hydroxymitragynine and three related synthetics are headed for Schedule I. The rule targets concentrated tablets and gummies, not the leaf. Worth reading closely, because most coverage collapsed the two into one story.
H.R. 9559, bipartisan, would write April's executive order into statute and give the attorney general sixty days to decide whether ibogaine moves from Schedule I to Schedule II. Note the verb: decide. The bill does not itself reschedule anything.
Oregon proposes fee increases and merges its psilocybin regulator
The Health Authority cited budget shortfalls and announced a merger with the medical cannabis program. Service centers have been closing since 2025. Oregon is the closest thing anyone has to a preview of what these programs actually cost to run.
Connecticut opens its psychedelic therapy pilot to any qualifying adult
Senate Bill 191, signed by Governor Lamont, widens the program past veterans and first responders to any adult over eighteen who meets the clinical criteria, and strips out the clause that would have ended the pilot the moment federal approval arrived.
Minnesota passes a psilocybin program through the House, then loses it in the budget
The vote was 114 to 15. The program did not survive final budget negotiations. What survived is a feasibility study, due 15 January 2027. A useful reminder that passing a chamber and becoming law are different things.
An executive order directs $50 million toward psychedelic research
Aimed at accelerating research and FDA review for ibogaine, psilocybin, LSD and MDMA. Read the category carefully. This is money and process, not rescheduling. Every one of these compounds remains Schedule I the morning after.
Governor Spanberger signed HB 1347 and SB 379, directing the Board of Pharmacy to reschedule psilocybin once the FDA approves it. Nothing changes today. It is a law that waits.
H.4200 and H.2203 advanced out of the Joint Committee on Mental Health. Sixteen months after voters rejected the statewide ballot measure, the legislature is working the same ground by a narrower route.
House Bill 1099 cleared the House 58 to 7 and was signed by Governor Rhoden. Like Virginia's, it legalizes synthetic psilocybin only if the FDA approves and the DEA reschedules. South Dakota is not a state anyone had on this list.
HB 390 authorizes a donation-funded clinical study for veterans with treatment-resistant PTSD. It is the first bill in the country endorsed by all three major veteran psychedelic organizations at once. Utah's veteran suicide rate is more than double the national average.
Portland writes a psychedelic health and safety code
Chapter 14B.140 makes non-commercial personal use a low enforcement priority and creates a standing advisory commission. Sales, impaired driving and unsafe conduct stay enforced. The largest city in the first legalizing state, arriving at deprioritization six years late.
Canada's decriminalization experiment expires and is not renewed
The three-year pilot ran out on 31 January and Ottawa let it lapse. Public use had already been recriminalized in 2024 after a political backlash. Worth knowing: psilocybin was never part of it in the first place. The pilot covered opioids, cocaine, methamphetamine and MDMA, and no Canadian province has ever decriminalized mushrooms.
New Jersey signs a $6 million hospital psilocybin pilot
Governor Murphy signed it on his way out. Three hospitals, one each in the north, center and south of the state, a two-year run, and an eleven-member advisory board reporting back to the legislature.
Czechia becomes the first country in the European Union to allow medical psilocybin
Passed in December and effective on New Year's Day. Psychiatrists may administer psilocybin where registered medicines have failed or cannot be tolerated. The scale is deliberately small, a few dozen patients a year, mostly in Prague and Brno. First in the EU, and the rest of Europe is watching how it goes.
New Mexico pulls its launch forward by a full year
Officials moved the target for the medical psilocybin program to December 2026, citing demand. The appropriation also seeded the Psilocybin Treatment Equity Fund with $630,000, the first serious attempt anywhere to address who can actually afford this.
JAMA publishes the first controlled trial of LSD for anxiety
The Phase 2b results for MM120, a pharmaceutical LSD, in generalized anxiety disorder. The compound holds FDA Breakthrough Therapy designation and is in Phase 3. It is not approved, and no approval date exists. Headlines saying otherwise are reading a trial as a decision.
New Zealand approves its first psilocybin prescriber
One psychiatrist, granted approval to prescribe outside a clinical trial. Medsafe published the framework a month later. A country of five million starting with a single doctor is not a rollout, but it is a door that was shut and now is not.
New Mexico becomes the third state, and the first by legislature
Senate Bill 219, the Medical Psilocybin Act. Every state before it arrived by ballot measure. New Mexico chose a medical model: a qualifying diagnosis, a physician, an approved clinical setting. Not Oregon's open door.
20241 entry
United StatesRejectedMassachusetts
Massachusetts voters turn down a statewide psychedelics measure
The ballot question would have created a regulated therapy framework and allowed limited personal use. It failed. Included here because a map that only shows the wins is not a map.
20237 entries
InternationalLegalizationAustralia
Australia becomes the first country anywhere to allow prescribed psilocybin and MDMA
The Therapeutic Goods Administration moved both to Schedule 8, letting authorised psychiatrists prescribe MDMA for PTSD and psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression. Note what this is not. There is no shop, no personal possession, no recreational use. It is a prescription pad, and only in the hands of a psychiatrist the regulator has vetted.
British Columbia decriminalizes small amounts of hard drugs for three years
Up to 2.5 grams of opioids, cocaine, methamphetamine or MDMA, under a federal exemption. An overdose-crisis measure rather than a psychedelics one, and psilocybin was pointedly left out. It is here because the reversal three years later is part of the same story.
The implementing framework for Proposition 122. Licensing, healing centers, rules. Unglamorous, and the reason the program exists at all.
United StatesResearchTexas
Texas funds ibogaine clinical development
Substantial state money, from a legislature nobody expected to lead here. Texas has stayed unexpectedly significant in this field ever since.
United StatesDeprioritizationMinneapolis, Minnesota
Minneapolis acts by mayoral order rather than council vote
A different mechanism from every city before it, and a more fragile one. Executive orders leave with the executive.
United StatesDeprioritizationBerkeley, CA · Medford, MA
Berkeley and Medford join the list
Two more municipalities, bringing the California and Massachusetts clusters to five and eight.
20225 entries
United StatesLegalizationColorado
Colorado passes Proposition 122
Protects specified adult personal-use activity and creates a licensed therapeutic services framework. Notably, it does not open a commercial retail market. A different model from Oregon's. Peyote is deliberately excluded, at the request of Native American leaders.
United StatesDeprioritizationSan Francisco, California
San Francisco passes a resolution covering all entheogens
Broad in scope, like Oakland's rather than Denver's.
InternationalResearchCanada
Canada reopens the Special Access Programme to psilocybin and MDMA
A doctor may request either one for a named patient with a serious or life-threatening condition, once the ordinary treatments have failed. Roughly three hundred psilocybin authorizations followed over the next three years. Not a programme so much as a series of individual permissions, granted one desperate case at a time.
United StatesDecriminalizationWashtenaw County, Michigan
A county prosecutor declines to charge entheogen offenses countywide
Not a council vote. A charging policy. Which means it lasts exactly as long as the prosecutor does.
United StatesDeprioritizationMichigan · Massachusetts · Washington
Five more municipalities act across three states
Ferndale, Pontiac and Ypsilanti in Michigan. Provincetown in Massachusetts. Jefferson County in Washington. The pattern by now is clusters, not scattered one-offs.
20217 entries
United StatesDeprioritizationDetroit, Michigan
Detroit passes Proposal E at the ballot box
Most municipal measures in this field are council votes. Detroit put it to the voters.
United StatesDeprioritizationSeattle, Washington
Seattle acts unanimously, the largest city yet
Unanimous, in a city of 750,000. The scale of the vote was the story.
United StatesDeprioritizationEasthampton, MA · Arcata, CA
Easthampton and Arcata join in
Small towns, and part of what makes the count add up.
United StatesDeprioritizationNorthampton, Massachusetts
Northampton becomes the third Massachusetts municipality in three months
January, February, March. Somerville, Cambridge, Northampton. The fastest regional cascade anywhere in the country.
United StatesDeprioritizationCambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge follows Somerville within weeks
The cluster begins to look deliberate.
United StatesDeprioritizationSomerville, Massachusetts
Somerville goes first in Massachusetts
The start of what becomes the largest municipal cluster in the country, at eight.
United StatesDeprioritizationMassachusetts · Michigan · Washington
Four more municipalities act
Amherst and Salem in Massachusetts. Hazel Park in Michigan. Port Townsend and Olympia in Washington.
20204 entries
United StatesLegalizationOregon
Oregon becomes the first state to legalize supervised psilocybin services
Measure 109 created a licensed service-center framework with trained facilitators. Not a retail market and not a medical prescription model. A third thing, and the first of its kind.
United StatesDeprioritizationWashington, D.C.
Initiative 81 passes in Washington, D.C. with roughly 76 percent
One of the widest margins any measure in this field has recorded. Note the category: this directs police to deprioritize enforcement. It does not change the law. And because Congress reviews District law, its position is uniquely precarious.
United StatesDeprioritizationAnn Arbor, Michigan
Ann Arbor votes unanimously, and Michigan's cluster begins
Michigan ends up with the second-largest group in the country, seven municipalities.
United StatesDecriminalizationSanta Cruz, California
Santa Cruz makes it unanimous
The third city in the country, and the second in California.
20192 entries
United StatesDecriminalizationOakland, California
Oakland goes broader than Denver
Where Denver's measure addressed psilocybin mushrooms, Oakland's covered entheogenic plants and fungi generally. Passed unanimously. The scope, not just the vote, was the news.
United StatesDecriminalizationDenver, Colorado
Denver becomes the first US city to decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms
Initiative 301 passed by fewer than two thousand votes. On the night it was a coin toss. Every municipal measure that followed traces back to it.
20081 entry
InternationalRegulatoryNetherlands
The Netherlands bans the mushroom and forgets the truffle
After a widely reported death, fresh and dried psilocybin mushrooms were prohibited. Sclerotia, the underground truffles from the same organism carrying the same molecule, were not named in the ban and remain on sale in licensed smart shops to this day. An accident of drafting that built a tourist industry.
Portugal decriminalizes possession of every drug at once
The first country in Europe to do it. Personal quantities send you to an administrative panel rather than a courtroom. Twenty-five years on it is still the most-cited experiment in drug policy anywhere, and still widely misdescribed: selling and producing remain crimes, and there is no legal way to obtain a psychedelic in Portugal.
More than a thousand papers had already been published on LSD. The Act did not answer the research question. It stopped anyone from asking it for the next fifty-six years.
Every entry here is checkable. Anything from 2025
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