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.
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
onward carries a link to the source, so you never have to take my word for it. The older entries
come from Chapter Eleven of the book, where they were verified for print. Spotted something
wrong? Tell me — that is the most useful message you can send.