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After an industry revolt, the Oregon Health Authority said Tuesday it would retreat from plans to double licensing fees for the people and institutions that operate under the state’s legal psychedelics program.
The agency had said the new fees—which would have cost some service centers, manufacturers and facilitators thousands of dollars more per year—would be used to patch the budget of a psilocybin regulatory regime that’s supposed to be self-sustaining.
But as WW reported this month, there was evidence the fee hikes would backfire: An informal poll by a Bend-based shroom facilitator found that so many centers and facilitators would leave the program if fees skyrocketed they might actually generate less overall revenue for the state than before.
Largely because psilocybin remains illegal federally, Oregon operators already work in a business environment with lots of red tape (which explains why a single therapy session can run thousands of dollars). OHA says it scrapped the plans because of the feedback.
How the program will patch its stated funding gaps remains unclear. But Heidi Pendergast, Oregon director of Healing Advocacy Fund, which advocates for the psilocybin industry, said the first step should be more budget transparency from the state, which has not been as open about its finances as she would like.
The industry is “at the ground level of trying to get a clearer picture of what the regulatory costs are for this program currently, before we can offer solutions on this,” Pendergast says.
