Responding to the Anti-Semitic Bigotry and Anti-Indigenous Colonialism of Decriminalize Nature’s Leadership

Recently a colleague forwarded a graphic that Decriminalize Nature’s leadership was spreading around listservs. This latest defamation campaign targets myself and River Styx co-directors Miriam Volat and Cody Swift using anti-semitic imagery and tropes as well as flat out lies and misinformation about us. The yellow stars in the images, which Jews were forced to wear in Nazi-occupied Europe,

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On Entheogenic Practitioner Duties and Privileges under Oregon’s 109 Program

Below is my formal comment I submitted to the OHA.  Please email publichealth.rules@dhsoha.state.or.us to submit your own written comment by 5:00 p.m. PDT on April 21, and if you can, also sign up to make direct verbal comments on April 18 and 21.  Also, please click this link to join an event the Portland Psychedelics Society is hosting at 6:00 p.m.

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Support CA’s Plastic Pollution Reduction Act and SB 54!

Our world is in a rapid state of change, both culturally and physically. Our planet’s life-giving cycles of carbon, water, and nutrients, and the living systems that depend on them, are under threat worldwide. We need to lower our consumptive impact on the planet – especially from global CO2 pollution and generation of waste – use our natural resources wisely,

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Natural Medicine Colorado: Combining Regulated and Community Healing Models

I’ve been waiting for the dust to settle to publish this blog regarding the Natural Medicine Health Act (NMHA), the ballot measure filed by Natural Medicine Colorado.¹ I see what the NMHA does as one seamless policy: making natural medicines—psychedelic plant and fungal medicines containing psilocybin, DMT, ibogaine or mescaline (excepting peyote)—available to all adult Coloradans in two powerful healing modalities: via a regulated access model in a therapeutic context;

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Let’s Strategically Raise the Minimum Wage for All Workers—with Paid Overtime for Farmworkers

In 2016 I authored an article titled “Raise the Minimum Wage Now! With a Smart, Fair, Incremental and Regional Approach,” where I stated with regards to the federal minimum wage (emphasis added) that: When a person working 40 hours a week can’t cover the basic costs of living, there’s something deeply wrong with our economic system.

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Genetic Engineering of Major Crops: the Most Recent Depressing Episode

In May this year, a Research Entomologist with the USDA contacted me and shared this message: I remember your full-page ad in the New Yorker several years ago when you predicted the disaster with dicamba-resistant transgenic soybeans. And guess what, it came true. And more to come: https://www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/web/ag/crops/article/2021/04/28/bayers-future-five-way-herbicide He was highlighting that the next Bayer-Monsanto GMO crop in the regulatory pipeline to be approved is now “stacked” with five different herbicide-tolerant traits to deal with the rise of “superweeds” that are increasingly herbicide resistant.

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Corrections to Misinformation Being Spread about MAPS and IPCI

I’m writing in my capacity as a board member of MAPS and supporter of the Indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative (as well as Decriminalize Denver, Decriminalize Nature DC, DN Seattle, Measures 109, 110 and the Plant Medicine Healing Alliance in Oregon).  Decriminalize Nature (DN) leadership is engaging in the same conspiracy smear campaign against MAPS over personal possession limits in SB519,

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Towards a More Rational and Compassionate Drug Policy

I began this blog on my return from going deep with ibogaine with my friends at Iboga Quest in Tepotzlan, Mexico. What incredible medicine, especially for folks in the throes of opiate addiction. Ibogaine interrupts withdrawal and resets the dopamine system, while precipitating an intense “life review” psychedelic experience, giving insights into behavior, thought patterns, and underlying traumas.

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California’s Psychedelic Decrim Bill SB 519 Marches On!

After a rollercoaster ride, Senator Scott Wiener’s SB 519 is through the California Assembly Health Committee with an 8 to 4 vote. In order to make this happen, Senator Wiener’s office advised that we would have to drop ketamine and adopt personal possession limits. There was fundamental disagreement with Decriminalize Nature (DN) on whether it was politically possible to convince the Health Committee to go for no limits.

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