The City Council in Portland, Maine, has voted to deprioritize the local enforcement of laws against psychedelic plants and fungi, adopting a resolution on Monday that emphasizes treating the use and possession of all controlled substances as a public health matter.<\/p>\n
The body voted 6\u20133 in favor of the resolution, which says that the arrest and prosecution of people for possession, use, cultivation for personal use or sharing without compensation should be the lowest law enforcement priority for the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe opinion that we\u2019re expressing here,\u201d Councilor Anna Trevorrow said at the meeting, \u201cis that use of psychedelic plants and fungi should be deprioritized by our criminal justice system in order to facilitate access to people who need this for a public health benefit.\u201d<\/p>\n
The resolution applies to all plants and fungi known to contain psilocybin, psilocyn, ibogaine, mescaline (except peyote), and dimethyltryptamine (DMT). Peyote is excluded \u201cin light of its vulnerable ecological status, combined with its religious and cultural significance to Indigenous peoples,\u201d the resolution notes.<\/p>\n
The resolution maintains \u201cthat City of Portland departments, agencies, boards, commissions, officers or employees of the city should avoid using city funds or resources to assist in the investigation, criminal prosecution or the imposition of criminal penalties\u201d for the covered activity. The substances would remain illegal under state law, but the city would deprioritize enforcement.<\/p>\n
The measure says that \u201cthe use and possession of all controlled substances should be understood primarily as an issue of public health.\u201d Enforcing state law against the personal use, possession, cultivation and sharing without compensation of substances, it continues, \u201cshall be among the lowest law enforcement priority\u201d of the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know what we\u2019re doing if we\u2019re not talking about harm reduction in the Health and Human Services of Public Safety Committee,\u201d said Councilor Victoria Pelletier, who sits on that committee, said at Monday\u2019s meeting<\/a>. \u201cI don\u2019t know what we\u2019re doing if we\u2019re not actually centering the work that we do around impacted parties we\u2019re dealing with substance use.\u201d<\/p>\n\n The council\u2019s Health and Human Services and Public Safety Committee passed the resolution on a 3\u20130 vote last month<\/a>, at which point members amended the resolution to cover home cultivation of natural entheogens for personal use and sharing without compensation. Criminal enforcement priorities will not change for selling, dispensing, possessing on school grounds or driving under the influence of the substances.<\/p>\n Enforcing state law against the personal use, possession, cultivation and sharing without compensation of substances, it continues, \u201cshall be among the lowest law enforcement priority of the City of Portland.\u201d<\/p>\n Before last month\u2019s committee vote, the panel heard comments from the public on the resolution. Among speakers, support for the change was unanimous.<\/p>\n Wendy Chapkis, a sociology professor at the University of Southern Maine and board member of Decriminalize Maine, told the body that people in Portland \u201care already taking plant medicines like psychedelic mushrooms.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhile these substances aren\u2019t dangerous in terms of things like addiction or overdose risk, they are powerful, and it\u2019s important that people can consume them in safe and supportive environments,\u201d she said. \u201cDecriminalization will make that much more likely.\u201d<\/p>\n Chapkis also emphasized last month that the policy shift would benefit \u201colder adults facing end-of-life issues, like extreme anxiety,\u201d who she described as \u201cpeople who should be doing these substances but aren\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s really good research that shows that psychedelics can relieve some of the problems that this population is facing,\u201d she said, \u201cbut those people most often have no idea how to access these medicines or how to use them.\u201d<\/p>\n As a resident of Portland for more than 30 years, Chapkis said she saw the measure as \u201canother opportunity for our city to lead the way by joining the more than a dozen other cities in the United States that have already decriminalized psychedelic botanicals and have done so in a way that avoids the problems of commercialization through the grow, gather, give model.\u201d<\/p>\n According to an August email from Chapkis to council that was included in meeting documents, the Portland resolution was originally based on a similar psychedelics measure in Cambridge, Massachusetts<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n