The Democratic governor of Arizona has vetoed a bill to legalize psilocybin service centers where people could receive the psychedelic in a medically supervised setting.
Less than a week after lawmakers gave final approval to the legislation, Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) rejected it on Tuesday, arguing that while the psychedelic may hold therapeutic potential, “we do not yet have the evidence needed to support widespread clinical expansion.”
“Arizonans with depression and PTSD deserve access to treatments that may be seen as outside the mainstream, but they should not be the subject of experiments for unproven therapies with a lack of appropriate guardrails,” the governor said in a veto message.
She also said that the bill’s estimated cost is $400,000 per year, which wasn’t accounted for in the budget.
Under the now-vetoed legislation, the Department of Human Services (DHS) would have been authorized to license psilocybin-assisted therapy centers in the state, where trained facilitators could have administered the psychedelic.
The measure would have significantly expanded on Arizona’s existing research-focused psychedelics law that provides $5 million in annual funding to support studies into psilocybin therapy.
Hobbs cited that research funding in her statement, saying the goal is to “ensure that those who
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