Welcome to the magic (mushroom) kingdom

In Oregon's Disneyland of Drugs, legalized psilocybin is the Epcot Center. Decriminalized by a statewide vote in 2020 and available from licensed "facilitators," psychedelic mushrooms have attracted many people to Portland to see what it's like to "journey" with the "medicine." From all accounts, there have been far more out-of-state patients tripping here than in-state. One shop invites "psychedelic tourists" to come give it a go.

But to do it the legal way is expensive, and there hasn't been as much demand as the mushroom entrepreneurs expected back when their eyes were all dollar signs. The other day we learned that the one "service center" located over by the airport is shutting down after half a year. The owner who reportedly lost the biggest shirt on that one is a used car dealer in Utah. I am not making that up.

I wound up voting against Measure 109, which established Oregon as the 'shroom experiment capital of the hemisphere, just as I voted against Measure 110, its companion measure that legalized hard street drugs and led to the prolonged destruction of Portland's core. I don't doubt that psilocybin can help some people with mental illness, but it should be administered by high-level mental health professionals – you know, doctors and psychologists – as part of a legitimate program of treatment. It should not be a one-day stand with some spacey former social worker who took a six-month course and passed an exam written by bureaucrats in Salem. It should not be like getting your nails done.

Then there are bound to be guys like this:

Li ran a chain of pain clinics in the state of Washington until 2016, when state regulators suspended his medical license, alleging that use of drugs his clinics prescribed had contributed to the deaths of 18 people who were his patients at the time, or had been in the recent past.

The U.S. Department of Justice came after him, too, alleging that he billed Medicare and Medicaid for thousands of unnecessary urine tests at a lab that he owned. He agreed to pay $2.85 million to settle those charges, on top of a lifetime ban from treating chronic pain.

Despite all that, the Oregon Health Authority granted Li permission last November to operate a psilocybin service center. He opened Immersive Therapies on Northwest Quimby Street in January.

The whole wacky scene can't be helping Oregon's reputation among sane people around the country. On top of normalizing street camping, addiction to dope, and vandalism, making psilocybin legal has pushed Oregon too far out there for the average Joe or Jane. We have let pride in our weirdness make the place the opposite of the attractive locale it was a couple of decades ago. 

I don't mind if the in-migration of California refugees slows; after all, I've complained about them for decades (hypocritically, after sort of being one of them myself). But the out-migration of working people who just want a quiet, normal life has been a real tragedy, and there's no end to that in sight.

Part of me thinks the worst of it is that Measure 109 sends out a vague message that magic mushrooms are groovy, and maybe everybody should try them. If that's the takeaway, well, the kids know that you don't really have to spend $2,000 and sit around all day in a clinic with a stranger old enough to be your dad. But when it's you and your friends over at the skateboard park with some caps that you scored from your older brother's friend's friend, that's when it becomes dangerous. The fewer people who attempt to go that route, the better. And yet we know:

The legalization of psilocybin mushrooms in Oregon is spurring an expansion of the decades-old illegal market.

“There are people and organizations openly facilitating psilocybin trips outside of the state-run system in Oregon,” says Vince Sliwoski, a lawyer at Harris Bricken Sliwoski LLP who specializes in cannabis and now psilocybin. “You don’t have to look that hard to find them. There’s going to be a big underground economy for this stuff.”

That underground is already expanding, people in the industry say. Facilitators, some of them newly graduated from trip training programs, are leading sessions in their homes, in Airbnbs, and on psychedelic retreats abroad. Amateur mycologists are growing hundreds of grams of Psilocybe cubensis in plastic tubs in basements around town.

Finally, let us not forget the off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot who was up in the cockpit trying to crash a plane over Portland a few months ago. His excuse was that he was coming off mushrooms from two days earlier. Whether he was tripping at a licensed place or on his buddy's couch wouldn't have mattered much, now, would it?

I don't think I'll ever like the feel of Measure 109.  I think we need less drugs, not more. Oh, well. Colorado's next. Let's hope I'm wrong, and not too many people get hurt before the whole thing gets restructured, the way Measure 110 did.

Speaking of which, when do you think Governor Kohoutek will sign the bill repealing most of Measure 110? I predicted it would be today, Good Friday, to minimize awkward media coverage. We'll soon see if my prediction was better than my March Madness bracket.