At the end of January, we covered the thirty-eight-odd bills introduced in state legislatures during the first month of the year. We described that flurry of activity as “2025’s Psychedelic Policy Surge”, with more than a dozen states set to mull over psychedelics-related policy reforms.
Now, as February comes to a close, we’re once again sharing a round-up of such bills as the total tally surpasses sixty across 22 states. That means there’s a band of proposed psychedelic policy reforms from coast-to-coast across the contiguous United States.
There is great diversity among these sixty-odd bills in terms of the type and magnitude of the changes they hope to achieve, the political leanings of the lawmakers backing them, and so on. Sure, there are nine-odd Compass Pathways-backed rescheduling trigger law bills, which aim to see the company’s drug rescheduled a month or two earlier in states without automatic rescheduling processes. But there are also much more substantive proposals, such as New York A 2142 which would establish a permit system for psilocybin use, Oregon-style psilocybin services models in states like Arizona (SB 1555) and the latest effort by Rep. Shipley to reschedule psilocybin in Iowa via HF 351 (he first filed this bill in 2019!).
This surge should now slow to a trickle, given that most states’ timelines for introducing bills for the new session have now passed. As such, our focus shifts to following the progress of these bills; a task we begin at the end of this round-up.
Here, Psychedelic Alpha’s Noah Smith and Josh Hardman present a state-by-state, bill-by-bill round-up of psychedelics-focused bills introduced since our last one.
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In this Article
- Arizona
- California
- Connecticut
- Georgia
- Iowa
- Illinois
- Kansas
- Kentucky
- Massachusetts
- New Mexico
- New York
- Nevada
- Oregon
- Utah
- Vermont
- Updates on Earlier-Filed Bills
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Arizona
Two Republican-sponsored Bills have been introduced in Arizona. One aims to appropriate funding for an ibogaine study, while the other is a repeat attempt by Rep. Shope to establish an Oregon-style psilocybin model in the state.
HB 2871: $10M in State Funds for Ibogaine Study (Since Halved to $5M)
This bill, introduced by child actor-cum-state Representative Justin Wilmeth (R), would appropriate $10 million from the state general fund in FY’25-26 to fund a clinical study “on the use of ibogaine for the treatment of neurological diseases, including traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.”
In doing so, Wilmeth joins several other efforts to pass ibogaine-specific bills, including Washington HB 5204 (which we reported on earlier), Kentucky SB 240, and two bills in New York, S 1817 and S 4664; all discussed below.
But amendments to Wilmeth’s Arizona bill have already been proposed by the House of Representatives which would half the original $10m appropriation from the state general fund to $5m, with a new section added also requiring that the recipient entity demonstrates they have received a commitment for matched funding from sources other than the state for at least $5m.
SB 1555: Oregon-Style Psilocybin Services Model
Also in Arizona, Representative T. J. Shope (R) has introduced an Oregon-style regulated psilocybin services bill.
The Representative sponsored this very bill in 2024—along with a bipartisan suite of colleagues—as SB 1570, but it was ultimately vetoed by Governor Hobbs in June. “People are interested in taking something natural that’s not a pharmaceutical”, he said in the aftermath of that veto at the American Legislative Exchange Council. He also said he would bring the bill back to the legislature in 2025, so this filing was to be expected.
The Senate Health and Human Services Committee has already gutted the text, however, having essentially stripped it down to a psilocybin advisory board bill. Under the current amendments, the Board would be required to publish an annual public report summarising the research and evidence on the safety and efficacy of psilocybin in treating mental health conditions.
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