Could communities in Colorado that don’t like mushrooms put up roadblocks?

Beth Jauquet, a psychedelic counselor, prepares to guide a psychedelic session using magic mushrooms at Primalized Health Consultants in Castle Rock, Colorado on Friday, July 19, 2024. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)

No city or county in Colorado can ban natural health centers from allowing adults to use mushrooms and other psychedelics under supervision, according to an initiative passed by state voters two years ago.

However, local governments have ample tools at their disposal to make the process of establishing such facilities a regulatory matter, as evidenced by the recent rulemaking in Parker and discussions to do the same in Castle Rock.

By using time, place and manner powers, municipalities can restrict opening hours and limit the locations of health centres to the point where players in the emerging sector feel it is not worth trying.

“It’s way too restrictive and unrealistic,” said Beth Jauquet, a psychedelic counselor and registered dietitian who last week pleaded with elected leaders in Castle Rock to roll back plans to rein in an industry that voters approved in a statewide vote in 2022.

Her company, Primalized Health Consultants, which offers acupuncture, nutritional counseling and massage, also offers guided psychedelic journeys, which are allowed under a provision of the new state law that allows adults 21 and older to share the substances. But Jauquet told the council that new location and time restrictions as part of formal industry regulation could hamper that side of her business.

The fast-growing city of 80,000 is considering pulling back 1,000 feet of land for daycare facilities, schools and housing, leaving just a small patch of industrial land in Castle Rock for psychedelic healers to ply their trade. The city is also discussing limiting the hours of healing centers to 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday — no evening or weekend services allowed.

Jauquet, whose business has been in business in Castle Rock for 14 years, said many of her patients are military veterans, some of whom suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. Psychedelics have been shown to be effective in treating symptoms of those conditions. It’s irresponsible to prevent them from getting treatment, she said.

“The veterans are tired of having to take all their medications,” Jauquet said.

Castle Rock follows in the footsteps of Parker, which in February became the state’s first municipality to enact local regulations for the natural medicines industry. Both cities are in Douglas County, the conservative swath of southern suburbs that defeated a measure to legalize psychedelics by a 10-point margin two years ago.

Douglas County has also consistently rejected Colorado’s legal marijuana market over the past decade, banning the sale and cultivation of the drug.

“I don’t want it here at all,” Castle Rock City Councilman Tim Dietz said at a City Council meeting last week, echoing the openly expressed sentiments of most elected leaders in both cities.

But Proposition 122, which passed by a 7-point margin in 2022, did not allow for a local opt-out, as was the case with Colorado’s 2012 recreational marijuana legalization measure. Parker Assistant City Manager Jim Maloney made that clear in his address to the City Council in February.

“We are time, place, manner,” he said matter-of-factly. “Sorry. That’s all we can do.”

Maloney said the rules the city has proposed comply with last year’s bill that laid out how Colorado’s recently legalized psychedelic industry would take shape.

Colorado’s new natural medicine law legalizes psilocybin and psilocin, two compounds found in “magic mushrooms,” for use in therapeutic settings and paves the way for the creation of healing centers where adults 21 and older can trip under the supervision of licensed professionals. It does not allow psychedelics to be sold in a store.

The law also decriminalizes the personal cultivation, use, and sharing of psilocybin and psilocin, as well as ibogaine, mescaline, and dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, for adults.

The state has yet to issue a set of rules for the natural medicine industry through both the Department of Revenue and the Department of Regulatory Affairs. The state is holding its final rulemaking task force meeting this week, with rules set to be released in the fall, said Heather Draper, a spokeswoman for the state’s Natural Medicine Division.

Applications for health center permits will be accepted starting in December, with the first permits expected to be issued early next year.

“We’re only the second state to try to start a natural medicine program, so we can’t really glean much from it,” Draper said.

Oregon was the first — four years ago.

But Parker and Castle Rock didn’t wait for state regulations to be lifted before tackling the problem in their own communities.

“We saw this and said, ‘Let’s get out of here quickly,’” Parker Mayor Jeff Toborg said in an interview with The Denver Post.

The city, he said, thought the best approach would be to put future healing centers in the same category as medical or dental offices, with strict hours and dark weekends.

“What are the hours of a doctor’s office? What are the hours of a dentist’s office?” Toborg said. “That’s from 8 to 5.”

The mayor acknowledged that there are no city requirements that doctors’ offices open or close at a certain time. Castle Rock will likely vote on the issue in September.

“I don’t like the idea of ​​being, for lack of a better word, the guinea pig,” Castle Rock Mayor Jason Gray said at last week’s City Council meeting. “But I also don’t want to close businesses that are legitimately going to open in Castle Rock and legitimately help people.”

Not all Colorado communities will adopt Parker’s one-size-fits-all approach, and Castle Rock may be no exception. Denver has been discussing a drug licensing framework for the past five months through a Natural Medicine Work Group run by the city’s Department of Excises and Licenses. The work group last met last week.