Another New Mexico Senate Committee Approves Bill To Legalize Psilocybin Therapy

Another New Mexico Senate committee has approved a bill to establish a therapeutic psilocybin program in the state.

Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday advanced the legislation from Sen. Jeff Steinborn (D), with only one member of the body—Sen. Katy Duhigg (D)—opposed. This comes about a month after the measure unanimously advanced through the Senate Tax, Business and Transportation Committee.

“Psilocybin mushroom has been researched and proven to be medically efficacious in a variety of ways,” Steinborn told the panel. “We developed this legislation…with the Department of Health. We spent much of the last six months going over this bill—every single word of this bill—with advocates [and] leading people all the way up to to the top of the executive branch.”

If enacted, the Medical Psilocybin Act would allow patients with certain qualifying conditions to access the psychedelic and use it under the guidance of a licensed healthcare provider.

The measure says its purpose “is to allow the beneficial use of psilocybin in a regulated system for alleviating qualified medical conditions,” including major treatment-resistant depression, PTSD, substance use disorders and end-of-life care. The state Department of Health would be able to approve additional conditions.

Therapy would consist of a preparation session, an administration session and a follow-up integration session.

“Unlike cannabis, this would only be administered in a medical setting,” Steinborn explained to the panel. “Often it only takes a dose or two. There is no card, there is no taking this at home.”

The state health department would be responsible for establishing guidelines around training for clinicians and producers, including dosage, approved settings for administration, production and storage protocols and other best practices. State officials would also license producers to grow mushrooms and process psilocybin.

Synthetic psilocybin and synthetic analogs of the substance would not be allowed under the proposal.

A nine-member advisory board would recommend additional qualifying conditions as well as rules around preparation and dosage. The board would also review outside petitions for additional qualifying conditions.

SB 219 would also create two new state funds. A medical psilocybin treatment equity fund would help offset costs of treatment for qualified patients who meet income requirements that would be set by the health department. And a medical psilocybin research fund would issue grants to support research into “any facet of the medical use of psilocybin.”

In terms of costs, the bill initially would have appropriated $2 million from the state general fund to the Department of Health in order to administer the program, while an additional $1 million each would go to the new research and equity funds.

An amendment adopted at Wednesday’s hearing stripped the appropriation amount from the bill, however. Steinborn noted that a separate House bill contains $2 million for the plan if it becomes law.

The same amendment also added a veteran representative to the proposed advisory board.

Another amendment, from Sen. Joseph Cervantes (D), who chairs the committee, intends to clarify that while psilocybin service providers would be shielded from criminal prosecution for their work related to psychedelics, they could still be subject to medical malpractice claims.

The panel declined to pursue an additional amendment suggested by Sen. Duhigg that would have adjusted the bill to include rules and regulations modeled after Oregon’s therapeutic psilocybin program, with supporters noting that the bill already calls for further rulemaking if it becomes law.

After that suggestion failed, Duhigg was the lone opponent to the committee’s passage of the bill.

Before the prior committee vote, members of that panel also adopted a technical amendment to the bill that Steinborn said was intended to correct a provision that unintentionally created a conflict around the legality of psilocybin.

When announcing the legislation late January, the sponsor said that the proposal “creates a carefully designed framework for the Department of Health to establish a medical program for psilocybin use.”

“Ensuring New Mexicans have access to every available treatment for serious behavioral health challenges is critical, and this proven therapy offers new hope for those in need,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Republican sponsor Sen. Craig Brandt (R) said he’s “excited to be able to offer this breakthrough medical treatment to New Mexicans.”

“Medical psilocybin is proving to be effective in treating traumatic brain injuries, PTSD, depression, and other mental health conditions,” he said. “As a veteran I’m hopeful that this new medical option will provide help to my fellow veterans.”

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Last year, New Mexico lawmakers passed, and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) endorsed, a resolution requesting that state officials research the therapeutic potential of psilocybin and explore the creation of a regulatory framework to provide access to the psychedelic.

The prior year, the House Health and Human Services Committee passed a bill that called for the creation of a state body to study the possibility of launching a psilocybin therapy program for certain patients. That measure did not advance further in the 2023 session, however.

Meanwhile in New Mexico, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are urging a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit from licensed marijuana businesses that claim the agencies have been unconstitutionally seizing state-regulated marijuana products and detaining industry workers at interior checkpoints.

Separately, late least year commissioners of New Mexico’s most populous county approved policy details of a plan to stop testing and punishing most government employees for off-hours marijuana use. Bernalillo County, where Albuquerque is located, appears to be the first public body in the state to implement such a reform following the state’s legalization of cannabis in 2021.

Ben Adlin contributed reporting.

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Photo courtesy of Dick Culbert.

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