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The Hawaii Senate has approved a bill that would create a psychedelics task force responsible for studying and making policy recommendations on providing access to breakthrough therapies such as psilocybin and MDMA.<\/p>\n
After advancing through the committee process, the full Senate on Friday passed the legislation from Sen. Chris Lee (D) in a unanimous vote of 24-0, sending it to the House of Representatives for consideration.<\/p>\n
The measure would create a Mental Health Emerging Therapies Task Force that\u2019d be tasked with spending two years reviewing the current scientific literature, supporting additional clinical research and \u201cdeveloping policy recommendations for safe, ethical, and culturally-informed implementation\u201d of a psychedelics therapy program.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe legislature finds that addressing the mental health crisis affecting the residents of the State, particularly among veterans, first responders, and trauma survivors, is urgent,\u201d the bill, SB 3199, states. \u201cSuicide continues to be a leading cause of preventable death, and the State must explore all safe and effective treatment options supported by scientific evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Noting that the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has already designated psilocybin and MDMA as breakthrough therapies in the treatment of serious mental health conditions, which could lend to future rescheduling under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), the Hawaii legislation says the state \u201cmust proactively prepare public health, clinical, and research systems for safe and equitable implementation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Members of the task force would have to include representatives of the state Department of Health (DOH), the attorney general\u2019s office, the Office of Wellness and Resilience (OWR), the University of Hawaii\u2019s medical school and more.<\/p>\n
As drafted, DOH would have overseen the task force, but that was amended in committee to make it the responsibility of \u201can entity with demonstrated expertise in primary scientific research and pharmaceutical or medical education.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAdministrative placement of the task force within an entity with demonstrated expertise in primary scientific research and pharmaceutical or medical education shall not be construed to transfer, delegate, diminish, expand, or otherwise modify any regulatory, enforcement, licensing, scheduling, or rulemaking authority vested in the Department of Health, Board of Pharmacy, or any other state agency,\u201d the bill as revised says. \u201cAll statutory authority relating to controlled substances, professional licensure, and public health regulation shall remain with the appropriate executive branch agencies as provided by law.\u201d<\/p>\n
It appears that the\u00a0bill<\/a>\u00a0would\u00a0build upon prior work conducted by a separate psychedelics task force that convened for the first time in 2023<\/a>, with a similar goal of exploring pathways for therapeutic access into FDA-approved breakthrough drugs like psilocybin.<\/p>\n \u2014 Meanwhile, Hawaii senators recently\u00a0approved a bill to legalize low-dose and low-potency marijuana<\/a>, even as their counterparts in the House of Representatives say cannabis prohibition will not be ended in the state this year.<\/p>\n A separate marijuana legalization bill that contained provisions making the reform contingent on changes to federal law or the state Constitution, SB 2421, was deferred for action. Both Senate and House panels additionally deferred action on a measure to allow for the sale of certain hemp-derived cannabinoid products.<\/p>\n The Senate committee action comes after\u00a0key House lawmakers signaled that cannabis legalization proposals would not be advancing<\/a>\u00a0in the 2026 session, citing a lack of sufficient support in their chamber.<\/p>\n On Thursday, another Hawaii Senate committee separately passed legislation to allow patients to immediately access medical cannabis once their registrations are submitted<\/a>, instead of having to wait until their cards are delivered as is the case under current law.<\/p>\n Image courtesy of CostaPPR<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n The post Hawaii Senate Passes Bill To Create Psychedelics Task Force And Study Pathways To Access Psilocybin And MDMA<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The Hawaii Senate has approved a bill that would create a psychedelics task force responsible for studying and making policy recommendations on providing access to breakthrough therapies such as psilocybin and MDMA. After advancing through the committee process, the full Senate on Friday passed the legislation from Sen. Chris LeeContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":458,"featured_media":85606,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[81],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85605"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/458"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85605"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85607,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85605\/revisions\/85607"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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