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Back in 2020, when Oregon voters legalized psychedelic mushrooms for use in therapeutic settings, proponents of the measure expected the industry to flourish like fungi in a fall mist.
Sadly, that hasn’t been the case. Rules governing the production and use of psilocybin are strict and the fees are high. Facilitators who guide psychonauts pay the fees, as do growers and operators of “service centers,” the antiseptic-sounding spaces where people are allowed to trip.
The bottleneck is in centers. The state charges owners $10,000 a year for a license and requires security cameras for patient safety and steel safes for storing Psilocybe cubensis because the magical species remains a Schedule I illegal drug under federal law.
The result? One quarter of the psilocybin service centers opened in the past two years have already closed.
The Oregon Health Authority has approved 34 service centers since licensing began on Jan. 2, 2023, but only 25 remain open, according to state data—a decline of 26%.
The slump doesn’t prove that mushrooms were a post-COVID fad. People are growing them in plastic tubs in basements and taking trips with facilitators in Airbnbs. It’s just that OHA isn’t offering what people want, says Ryan Reid, co-founder of Bendable Therapy, a nonprofit center that offers psilocybin trips in Bend.
Reid wants the legal industry to survive. To that end, he has been collating information to supplement what he says is incomplete data from OHA’s Oregon Psilocybin Services division. “OPS has been very opaque over the years on license numbers,” Reid says.
A mechanical engineer, Reid created the chart above, and many others, to show that legal tripping is in trouble. Measure 109, the initiative that voters approved, is sound, he says, but the rules that OHA formulated to administer the program make doing business almost impossible. Case in point: People who want to take micro-sized doses of psilocybin that don’t produce psychedelic effects (a popular therapeutic practice) must go through the same onerous paperwork as someone taking a hero dose that is very likely to cause their ego to dissolve.
Others agree. Andreas Met of Satya Therapeutics in Ashland says he and his facilitators have guided 1,000 mushroom journeys at $1,000 per session. Even so, Met says it’s hard to stay in business because of Oregon’s draconian laws and high licensing fees.
“Every month is a month of survival,” Met, a former Walmart executive, says.
Like Reid, Met is taking action. He recently co-founded the Psilocybin Alliance, “a coalition dedicated to supporting the survival and growth of Oregon’s psilocybin industry through collaborative engagement and the legislative process,” according to an email he and fellow founders sent to Angela Allbee, manager of OHA’s psilocybin division last week.
Met says he and his three co-founders started the alliance because industry group Healing Advocacy Fund isn’t doing enough to keep service centers like his in business.
“I’m in it until they shoot me in the head,” Met says. “I want this business to work.”
Heidi Pendergast, Oregon director at the Healing Advocacy Fund, says the state focused on safety first. In two years, facilitators have had to call emergency responders to just 0.1% of all client sessions, she says.
“We are seeing that the safety guardrails work,” Pendergast said, “and now it is time for us to reevaluate the rules for business viability, and to see where we can loosen things without jeopardizing safety and make more businesses viable.”
The loss of service centers poses an existential threat to legal shrooms. Backers of Measure 109 told voters that licensing fees and surcharges on psilocybin would pay for staff that OHA needs to administer the program. Taxpayers wouldn’t be footing the bill.
In its 2023–25 budget, OHA said it might take “several months” before fees paid psilocybin’s way. That has proven wildly optimistic. The health authority had to tap the state’s general fund for $3.1 million to operate the program in the current biennium, which ends June 30, and will have to do so again for the next two years if licensing fees from service centers, shroom growers, and testing labs remain anemic.
But, as of now, there is no general fund money coming.
“There is no funding that OPS is aware of that is coming from the Legislature to support the program for 2025–27, which means that OPS must evaluate the possibility of increasing licensing fees,” OHA spokeswoman Erica Heartquist said in an email.
Some comfort: The first service center to open, EPIC Healing Eugene, is still in business. But founder Cathy Jonas, a licensed clinical social worker, says she worries that OHA will raise the $10,000 annual fee on service centers to fill its budget hole.
“There’s a lot to manage when you open a service center,” Jonas says. “You have to have a thick skin to stay in the game. Helping people on a deep level is what keeps me going.”