The local ballot measure would not quite legalize “magic” mushrooms, the ones that contain psilocybin, a naturally occurring psychedelic compound. State and federal regulations would have to change to accomplish that.
But if it passes, the measure would make the possession, use or cultivation of the mushrooms by people 21 or older the lowest-priority crime for law enforcement in the city of Denver and Denver County. Arrests and prosecutions, already fairly rare, could all but disappear.
Adoption of the measure could signal fledgling public acceptance of a mind-altering drug, outlawed nationally for nearly 50 years, that recent research suggests could have beneficial medical uses. A similar effort failed to get on the ballot in California last year but could come up again in 2020. Oregon voters may also vote on a comparable measure next year.
Proponents of more lenient criminal enforcement of psilocybin cite studies indicating that the drug can be beneficial for treating depression and anxiety among cancer patients. Other studies have identified potential uses in therapy for alcoholics and people trying to quit smoking, and in treating depression in people who do not have cancer.
“Because psilocybin has such tremendous medical potential, there’s no reason individuals should be criminalized for using something that grows naturally,” said Kevin Matthews, director of the “Decriminalize Denver” campaign.
Matthews, 33, credits psilocybin mushrooms with helping pull him out of a major depression that forced him to withdraw from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where he was a cadet for three years in his 20s.
“It really helped me see outside the box of my own life,” Matthews said of the drug. “It brought me out of the depths of my own internal struggles and despair.”
Matthew Johnson, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, was one of the authors of a study last year recommending that the Food and Drug Administration reclassify the drug to acknowledge its potential medical uses and relatively low potential for abuse.
Psilocybin is not addictive, and “there’s no direct lethal overdose” of the drug on record, Johnson said.
“But someone can have a dose that’s psychologically challenging,” he warned. “They panic and they wander into traffic and they die. It’s an admittedly low scale, but if that’s your son or daughter who has gotten into a fatal accident, as rare as that it is, that’s very real.”
Researchers who study psilocybin’s effects use a synthetic version of the drug in carefully controlled environments, he said, which is different from someone growing mushrooms and ingesting them at home.
“Decriminalization in general is supported by public health science,” Johnson said about Denver’s psilocybin ballot measure. “But if this happens, I would hope that the city would be very clear that it’s not endorsing use and that there are very clear risks.”
The ballot measure, Initiated Ordinance 301, would also establish a panel to review the law’s impact on public health and safety. The polls are scheduled to close at 7 p.m. Mountain time.
Art Way, the Colorado state director for a pro-legalization advocacy group, the Drug Policy Alliance, praised the local effort in Denver to move psilocybin enforcement off the police’s radar. But he cautioned against tackling the issue piecemeal.
“Separating some drugs as good and some as bad will only stand to perpetuate the drug war,” he said.
Arrests in Denver for incidents involving psilocybin have not numbered more than 59 in any of the past three years and only 11 cases were prosecuted in that time.
Beth McCann, district attorney in Denver, opposes the ballot measure, according to a spokeswoman, Carolyn A. Tyler.
“We’re still in the very early stages of marijuana legalization and we are still learning the impact of that substance on our city,” Tyler said. “And she is not in favor of Denver being the only city that doesn’t enforce the law.”
Mayor Michael Hancock, who is up for re-election in the municipal election Tuesday, is also against the proposal, his office said, without elaborating on his reasoning. The Denver Police Department declined to take a position.
Matthews, the leader of the decriminalization campaign, said the initiative had not met with any organized public opposition. His group collected the necessary signatures to get the proposal on Tuesday’s ballot and raised about $45,000, mostly for social media advertising. No polling has been conducted on the measure.
Jeff Hunt, director of the Centennial Institute, a policy research group at Colorado Christian University, said he thought the measure could pass, since no one systematically campaigned against it — but people might also be wary of deregulating too many drugs at the same time.
He noted that decriminalization was the first step toward legalizing marijuana and said that proponents of the psilocybin measure, which he opposes, might be trying to travel the same road.
“What we’re seeing is a kind of social libertarianism that is reacting against the war on drugs, and that’s led us to a position where people feel like drugs like marijuana and even psilocybin could be harmless,” Hunt said. “And that’s deeply harmful.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.