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Vermont Public Reports

A legislative advisory group that was asked to make recommendations about whether health care providers should be allowed to use psychedelics to improve mental health says Vermont is not ready to begin a statewide program.

Lawmakers set up the Psychedelic Therapy Advisory Working Group earlier this year to review the latest research on using drugs such as psilocybin, LSD or MDMA to treat mental health disorders, and also to look at what other states are doing in the field of psychedelic therapy.

The group met this summer, and while they are asking legislators to extend the group’s work and expand the number of participants in the study, they found that more research needs to be completed before allowing Vermont health care providers to administer psychedelic-assisted therapy.

“Our primary recommendations are to keep monitoring,” said Kelley Klein, medical director for the Department of Mental Health and a member of the working group. “There is a lot of promising information out there, but it is really limited. The studies that are available currently, there are small sample sizes, and we want to make sure that there is enough evidence to be able to generalize to the population in Vermont.”

Lawmakers asked the group to look at whether Vermont could set up a state program that permits health care providers to administer psychedelics in a therapeutic setting, and also what the impact would be on public health if Vermonters could access psychedelics legally.

According to the report, some members of the advisory group would not consider moving forward before the FDA approves the therapies, even as Vermont monitors what happens in other states.

Klein said she hopes lawmakers agree to continue doing the study, even if it takes a few more years before psychedelics are available in a clinical setting.

“I am not surprised at the outcome of this. I knew there was going to be varied backgrounds of individuals coming into this,” Klein said. “I think truly things are progressing research-wise and I think that before 2026, 2027 there likely will be approval for some of these medications in general, and that will help things progress as well.”

While there was some consensus among the nine-member group — most broadly that psilocybin-containing mushrooms should be the focus of any statewide program — there was also a lot of disagreement about how aggressively Vermont should start experimenting with the therapy at this time.

“I recognize that these are newer treatments, and that there’s emerging evidence here,” said Kurt White, vice president of community partnerships at the Brattleboro Retreat, and a member of the advisory group. “And there were various feelings in the room about how quickly we should move or not move ahead of FDA decision-making about future authorized medications and treatments.”

There are currently only two states, Oregon and Colorado, that have enacted a statewide process of legally accessing psychedelic substances.

Massachusetts voters on Election Day rejected a statewide initiative that would have decriminalized some psychedelic drugs.

The nine-member Vermont advisory group was not able to reach consensus on a number of issues, including whether some kind of program should be set up, including establishing a safe consumption site that would be overseen by health practitioners.

At the same time, the group is immediately asking for more funding to go into harm reduction training and education for health practitioners and the public as more people experiment with the therapy.

White said he was specifically disappointed that the group did not want to move ahead with allowing more research into using psychedelic therapy with end-of-life care.

“I thought it might have been possible for us to do a bit more than we did,” White said. “But I think that the idea that we’re going to keep looking at things, and see what emerges, is a good first step.”

It will now be up to lawmakers to decide where to go from here.

The group is asking to continue researching the issue by monitoring what other states are doing, and they want lawmakers to facilitate the ability for researchers to study the effects of psychedelic therapy here in Vermont.

Specifically they want to see how psilocybin-assisted therapy can help depression and anxiety during end-of-life care.

“I’m not one of the people who feels like we need more research, and need more data to figure out what to do,” said Rick Barnett, who was chair of the Psychedelic Therapy Advisory Working Group, and is co-founder of the Psychedelic Society of Vermont. “These compounds have been around for thousands of years. Whether Western science and research has caught up to it is kind of irrelevant to me.”

Barnett said that while he was frustrated and disappointed that the study recommendations did not go further, he thinks it does move the conversation forward.

The group was charged with looking at the therapeutic aspects of psychedelics, Barnett said, and not whether psilocybin should be decriminalized.

But he said when lawmakers get back to Montpelier, he wants to continue that conversation as a way to get more of the public comfortable with talking about the use of psychedelics.

“People are using these substances. They’re growing their own, they’re acquiring it and using it,” he said. “But it’s still criminalized, so they’re doing it under the fear of potentially getting in trouble legally, and that’s not a good mindset to go into having a psychedelic experience.”

https://www.vermontpublic.org/local-news/2024-11-15/advisory-group-says-vermont-not-ready-to-legalize-psychedelic-therapies