Advocacy Group Aims to Decriminalize Ayahuasca in Portland

Ayahuasca ceremony in Brazil An ayahuasca ceremony in Brazil. (upslon / Flickr) (upslon)
By Sophie Peel

A new advocacy group, the Plant Medicine Healing Alliance, is bringing an ambitious proposal to Portland City Hall: It wants to decriminalize the cultivation, possession and use of plant and fungi medicines, the most well-known one being ayahuasca.

Nathan Howard of East Fork Cultivars is one of the organizers. Howard says people “are finding very deep healing through plants that aren’t protected in the same way that we’ll soon have for psilocybin therapy”—the use of psychedelic mushrooms approved by Oregon voters last fall.

Howard tells WW the group will meet with Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty on April 22, and much of the group’s decision whether to continue pursuing the proposal in its current form will hinge on her response.

Howard says the alliance’s proposal is “in a very different lane” than Measure 109, which allowed psilocybin-assisted therapy, in that advocates are not asking Portland City Hall to regulate fungi medicines through licensed channels.

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