✅ Reality: True equity means ensuring that access is broadly available regardless of income or other protected characteristic. Thus a range of access options must be available, from clinical to spiritual to personal cultivation — Restricting access to facilitated sessions under the guise of safety is not equity.
✅ People should be able to grow, gift, and gather freely and provide peer support without cost barriers.
✅ Instead of forcing communities into a rigid framework, let’s empower people to care for one another through creative, affordable, and culturally appropriate containers.
✅ Regulation should not come at the cost of autonomy. People should have the right to choose how, where, and with whom they engage in psychedelic experiences.

✅ Reality: A regulated system actually increases enforcement risks for unregulated use.
✅ These bills create financial incentives for the state to crack down on home-growers, small community circles, and spiritual practitioners outside the regulated framework.
✅ Law enforcement disproportionately targets marginalized communities when enforcing drug laws—even when overall arrest numbers are low.
✅ In Oregon, licensed facilitators are now required to report violations, meaning people in unregulated settings are at greater risk of being turned in by those operating within the legal system.

✅ Reality: This bill reinforces stigma by implying that psychedelics are only safe in state-controlled settings.
✅ Public perception will be shaped by messaging that positions engaging with natural psychedelics in non-regulated, personal, or spiritual contexts as “risky”.
✅ Education should not be limited to a single state-sanctioned model that excludes the many other safe, responsible, and culturally significant ways to engage with natural psychedelics.

✅ Reality: Cannabis legalization proves the opposite—once a regulated system is in place, industry influence often blocks broader access.
✅ Washington still does not allow homegrown cannabis for non-medical users— over a decade after legalization.
✅ The messaging around this bill already reinforces the idea that natural psychedelics must be accessed in a controlled system. If that’s the starting point, why would legislators be inclined to expand access later?

✅ Reality: This bill risks entrenching a limited framework that could block or delay full protection of personal and community-based frameworks for years.
✅ If Washington only passes a regulated model first, it creates a system where the state and private companies have a vested interest in keeping personal access illegal to protect their business model.
✅ Oregon’s regulated system is so expensive that many people still turn to underground options, yet without legalization of personal and community contexts, they remain legally at risk.

✅ Reality: Experience in states with regulated programs suggests otherwise. Many participants who begin in regulated settings later choose to engage with psychedelics outside expensive clinical contexts, once they feel informed and confident.

✅ People value having real choice—including options that are low-cost, culturally relevant, and grounded in trusted relationships. Personal and community-based pathways meet needs that regulated systems alone cannot.

✅ Across Washington, networks of peer education and mutual support already exist and continue to grow. These models work because people are empowered to care for one another, share knowledge, and build safety through relationship—not just regulation.

✅ Protecting personal and community-based pathways ensures that the full range of preferences and needs is respected, rather than assuming a single model works for everyone.