New Jersey lawmakers have approved a bill to legalize therapeutic access to psilocybin for adults with qualifying health conditions.
Weeks after the Assembly Health Committee advanced the legislation—sponsored by Assemblymembers Herb Conaway (D), Clinton Calabrese (D) and Anthony Verrelli (D)—the Assembly Appropriations Committee signed off on it on Thursday.
The Health panel last year amended the legislation in a way that aligns in with a Senate version. To advocates’ disappointment, however, that meant removing provisions that would have more broadly legalized psilocybin for adult use.
Initially, the legislation was introduced in identical form to what lawmakers proposed in the 2024 session—a plan that included personal legalization provisions, which the recent amended versions takes out. Those components would have made it legal for adults to “possess, store, use, ingest, inhale, process, transport, deliver without consideration, or distribute without consideration, four grams or less of psilocybin.”
The amended measures would nevertheless significantly expand on legislation introduced in late 2020 to reduce penalties for possession of up to one ounce of psilocybin. That reform that was signed into law by Gov. Phil Murphy (D) in 2021.
Assemblywoman Lisa Swain (D), who chairs the Appropriations Committee, described the bill on Thursday as a “first step.”
“I mean,
Read full article on Marijuana Moment
