Portland Activists Call for Psychedelics to Be Decriminalized

Activists in Portland are calling for the city commission to approve a measure that would decriminalize the ceremonial use, gifting and growing of a number of psychedelics. This new measure would make community-based ceremonies and activities that involve entheogenic substances such as ibogaine and ayahuasca among the lowest law-enforcement priorities in Portland, Oregon.

The activists, who are part of the PMHA (Plant Medicine Healing Alliance), worked with indigenous groups to draw up the initiative. This is why DMT extracted from toads and peyote were excluded from the initiative because of sustainability concerns. According to an overview, the draft initiative would proclaim peoples’ right to administer, possess, prepare or grow entheogenic substances, especially for a good faith, spiritual or religious practice or community healing.

The proposal also states that entheogenic fungi and plants are revered and have been considered as sacred to human cultures across the globe for millennia and, in addition to being nonaddictive, are used even today by sincere and respected spiritual and religious communities and leaders. The proposal also mentions the growing body of scientific evidence that demonstrates the therapeutic value that psychedelics have in the treatment of specific mental health disorders such as PTSD.

In addition to this, the initiative states that the city of Portland shall not spend any funds or resources to prosecute, arrest or investigate individuals merely because they engage in these practices. Furthermore, it requests that the state legislature support the measure.

This is not the first time that activists have pursued local psychedelics reform in the city. Last year, Decriminalize Nature Portland revealed that it would be pushing legislators to enact better changes in policy. However, this approach did not succeed. Additionally, in November 2020, voters in the state of Oregon passed a drug- policy reform initiative that decriminalized the possession of all illicit drugs, making it the first state in the nation to do so. The state also legalized the use of psilocybin for the treatment of mental health conditions, in supervised settings, when Measure 109 was approved in the same month.

Portland isn’t the only city calling for psychedelics reform. Ann Arbor, Michigan, has decriminalized psychedelics with legislators in the city having recently approved a measure to officially make September the Entheogenic Plants and Fungi Awareness Month.

Other cities, including Santa Cruz and Oakland, both in California, have also approved measures to decriminalize psychedelic substances, with psychedelics reform measures also advancing in Arcata, California; Easthampton, Massachusetts; and Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Given the promising findings from the research conducted by companies such as Cybin Inc. (NEO: CYBN) (NYSE American: CYBN), it isn’t surprising that different movements are taking steps to see various psychedelics decriminalized or even legalized.

NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to Cybin Inc. (NEO: CYBN) (NYSE American: CYBN) are available in the company’s newsroom at https://ibn.fm/CYBN

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