New Mexico Joins Colorado in Legalizing Psilocybin Therapy

There goes our neighbor, New Mexico. We legalize recreational weed, so New Mexico must legalize recreational weed. We legalize medical psilocybin, so New Mexico must legalize medical psilocybin.

But we decriminalized a handful of natural psychedelics for personal use, and New Mexico cannot afford.

Great success!

In all seriousness, New Mexico took a major step forward with psilocybin on Monday, April 7, when Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham signed a bill approved by lawmakers allowing for licensed mental health practitioners to provide psilocybin-assisted therapy. Similar to a program approved by Colorado voters in 2022, the new law allows patients with qualified medical conditions to use psychedelic mushrooms under the supervision of a licensed professional before undergoing a therapy session.

Also in line with Colorado's approach, New Mexico will set up state review and recommendation boards to iron out the final details of its upcoming psilocybin program, which will allow for licensed cultivators and facilitators to grow and administer mushrooms. To qualify, patients must have forms of treatment-resistant depression, suffer from substance use disorders or post-traumatic stress, or be in end-of-life care. New conditions may be added by the New Mexico Department of Health, however.

But New Mexico's psilocybin program was created and approved by lawmakers, while Colorado's was part of a voter-approved initiative. And under Colorado's initiative, adults aged 21-and-up can cultivate, posses, use and share psilocybin as well as DMT and mescaline (that is not from peyote); ibogaine can be cultivated, possessed and used, but not shared.

New Mexico lawmakers didn't go that far, stopping at the medical program. Had Colorado's state legislators crafted all of our new psilocybin laws, there's a strong chance we wouldn't have such a liberal landscape. Still, Colorado's looming psilocybin therapy program should help our southern neighbors get a view of what's to come, and we're going to be up and running soon.

According to the Colorado Natural Medicine Division, the state's first healing center license was issued on April 2 to a downtown Denver facility, the Center Origin. The division has also approved a mushroom cultivation license in Colorado, with twenty more healing center applications and ten cultivation applications pending.

There are several other dominos that need to fall before Colorado psilocybin healing centers are open, however, including the approval of psilocybin testing labs and approval from local governments in which they operate.

“While there is a lot of excitement around the issuance of the first natural medicine healing center license, it doesn’t guarantee a specified timeline for when the licensee can begin operations,” NMD director Dominique Mendiola said in a statement after approving the first healing center license. “It’s important for the Division to continue its focus on processing applications for other license types to ensure regulated natural medicine is available to healing centers and facilitators.”

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