WHO DO YOU TRUST on a ballot questioning decriminalizing a suite of psychedelic drugs – the president of the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society or a US Navy veteran who has personally used psychedelics to treat her depression and post-traumatic stress disorder?
Emily Oneschuk, a US Navy veteran and the grassroots campaign director for Massachusetts for Mental Health Options – the group pushing for the ballot measure – said psychedelics can help people like herself who have had to deal with mental illness.
“The folks that are supporting our ballot are people…doing this because they care about it, because they’ve had family members struggle with mental health, because they see it as an improvement to what is a failing mental health system,” said Oneschuk. “There are people [that] live here in Massachusetts [who] care about this just like I care about it.”
But Dr. Nassir Ghaemi, the president of the state psychiatric society, characterized the ballot measure as a threat to public health being pushed by a campaign backed by big donors.
“We’re not opposed to medical use [of psychedelics], but this is not medical use,” said Ghaemi. “This is full-scale legalization in an unregulated and for-profit way.”
Ghaemi and Oneschuk squared off in a debate on GBH News moderated by Jim Braude and Margery Eagan. Question 4 on the ballot would decriminalize five psychedelics, including psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms. The measure would create a regulated system for the use of the psychedelics in licensed therapeutic settings. while also allowing those over the age of 21 to cultivate, possess, consume, and “share” these substances.
The pro-psychedelics ballot campaign has reported $4,376,982 in contributions, while the opposing group has not reported any fundraising. Some big donors to the measure have included Eliza Dushku, an actress and Massachusetts native whose credits include a role in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer show; The Outreach Team, a national consulting firm based in New York that works on progressive causes; Blake Mycoskier the founder of Toms Shoes; and a company based in California called “All One God Faith, Inc.” that produces Dr. Bronner’s soaps. There are some individuals who have given to the campaign who work at venture capital firms, real estate companies, and tech companies.
CommonWealth Beacon has previously reported on polling data that shows that the question is in a precarious position with 44 percent of people polled opposed to the measure, 42 percent in favor, and the rest undecided.
Ghaemi said the ballot measure is too extreme. “There may be, under certain circumstances, some benefits to [psychedelics] if the harms are mitigated,” Ghaemi said. “But to legalize them all the way for anybody to take in their bedroom and take it when they want to goes way too far and is way too dangerous.”
He predicted the measure would lead to more traffic accidents due to intoxicated driving and more emergency room visits that would further add to the load on already overwhelmed hospitals.
In Oregon and Colorado, fears about the public safety risks of legalizing psychedelics have not panned out. In Oregon, only psilocybin is legalized and only in therapeutic settings. Colorado has a model much more similar to what’s being pushed in Massachusetts, with several different psychedelics decriminalized. Early data from a report done by a libertarian think tank has found that there haven’t been health or safety harms from the Colorado legalization.
Oneschuk emphasized that decriminalization is less about making the psychedelics more available and more about removing the stigma around them so people can have more information about drugs that they might already be consuming.
She said that, at first, the decriminalization aspect gave her pause. “It took me a little while to wrap my head around it, but what I had to come to realize was that hundreds of thousands of people are using these [psychedelics] already,” said Oneschuk. “They’re using them without being able to talk to their healthcare provider about it. They’re not able to get vetted information anywhere but the internet. So keeping [the psychedelics] criminalized is just keeping this stigma where people aren’t getting information on what responsible, safe use looks like.”
Ghaemi said psychedelics pose a danger to people who already suffer from mental illnesses that have a psychotic component like schizophrenia. According to him, psychedelics can induce or exacerbate symptoms of psychosis in those people.
He singled out Ibogaine – another substance that would be legalized by the ballot question – as having known negative impacts on cardiac health.
Oneschuk said Ibogaine grows in West Africa and that it would be “impossible” to grow in Massachusetts. She said that the ballot measure would mostly make the substance available in a therapeutic setting.
Ghaemi didn’t think much of the therapeutic model proposed in the ballot measure, which emulates the model that currently exists in Oregon. In that model, there are licensed facilities where people can ingest psilocybin and licensed facilitators who watch over people who choose to take the psilocybin therapeutically. These facilitators are not necessarily medical or mental health professionals. Rather, anyone with a high school diploma can become a facilitator by taking a 120-hour training followed by a 40-hour hands-on practical training under the guidance of a supervisor to become a facilitator.
Ghaemi said the proposed Massachusetts law is similar to the Oregon statute in that it would allow non-medical professionals to facilitate. He argued that those without medical training would not have the skill and perspective to recognize when the psychedelic substances could be harmful to a person.
Where Ghaemi argued that the public health risks far outweigh the benefits that would come from this legalization measure, Oneschuk repeatedly emphasized the positive impacts of psychedelics in her own life and argued that psychedelics are a much-needed option for people suffering from bad mental health without an alternative treatment.
“This is a mental health option [and] we don’t say it’s a panacea,” said Oneschuk. “Seventeen veterans die by suicide every day…and I’m really tired of sitting by the sidelines waiting for someone else to come up with an option. This is an option we can act on right now. I feel very passionately about it and so do a lot of other veterans.”
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