The psychedelics reform movement had another victory on Thursday, with the Utah House of Representatives overwhelmingly passing a bill to set up a task force to study and make recommendations on the therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs.
The piece of legislation would also create possible regulations for the legal use of psychedelic drugs, Marijuana Moment reported.
Introduced by Rep. Brady Brammer (R) in January, the bill would create a Mental Illness Psychotherapy Drug Task Force tasked with studying and making recommendations on drugs that can assist in treating mental illness, specifically controlled substances that are “not currently available for legal use.”
The chamber greenlighted the bill, which cleared the House Health and Human Services Committee last week in a 68-1 vote.
“We need effective tools to treat mental illness,” said Brammer, who previously recognized that as a conservative Mormon he might not be the most likely candidate to support a psychedelics bill, but “if psychedelics can be helpful and safely administered, we need them in our toolbox.”
Brammer concluded that there are “indications of treatment benefits for treatment-resistant depression, PTSD, addiction and existential distress” through the use of certain entheogenic substances after taking into account existing research.
Moreover, these kinds of treatments “are already happening underground,” Brammer said, adding that he received significant feedback following the introduction of the legislation.
“I was surprised how many people are reaching out and saying, ‘hey, you know, I’ve already done this, and it helped me,’ and we don’t want to have people self-prescribing illicit drugs,” he continued.
“We have a very significant medical tourism in this where people—a lot of counselors are already sending people down to Mexico or down to other jurisdictions,” Brammer said. “If that is happening, and they’re finding good results, I much prefer that they do it safely and they do it here if we can do it that way.”
Photo: Courtesy of Benzinga
