Psychedelics Ballot Question Still a Tossup

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When Ana Demme was a child, she was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder and autism, and experienced “a lot of childhood trauma.” Those struggles followed her to college, where her OCD symptoms intensified. She said campus psychiatrists took “a really heavy handed approach” by putting her on medications that only worsened her symptoms. 

Nothing seemed to work for Demme: psychiatric medications, cognitive behavioral therapy, talking with therapists, hypnotherapy. So she began taking “street drugs” to cope, eventually leading her to overdose on what she said was fentanyl-laced ketamine in 2019.

But after her overdose, she said her life took a positive turn when a friend introduced her to a facility that offered treatments with natural psychedelic substances. After just one session, she quit drugs and cigarettes. She has been sober ever since.

“On the other side of this I felt OK, I felt safe, I felt like I wanted to be alive,” she told The Shoestring. “How beautiful is it that Earth gave us these plants?”

Now, Demme is part of a coalition working to pass a ballot question on Election Day that would give others that same opportunity. Question 4 on Massachusetts voters’ ballots would allow for those 21 and older to use, under licensed supervision, natural psychedelics like psilocybin — the compound found in “magic mushrooms” — as well as psilocyn, mescaline, DMT, and ibogaine. The question wouldn’t legalize the recreational sale of those substances, but it would decriminalize and allow people to grow them. It would also create a commission similar to the state’s Cannabis Control Commission to regulate their use.

However, while Demme and others might support Question 4, there are plenty of others who have expressed skepticism of the initiative. Those tensions have made it one of the most hotly contested ballot questions in the state this election cycle, according to recent polling.

On Wednesday, a new Emerson College Polling/WDH survey found that 50% of voters support the ballot question, 44% are against it, and 6% are unsure. A University of Massachusetts Amherst/WCVB poll released on Oct. 15 found that a majority of state residents supported four of the five ballot questions they’re voting on. The only one that was a toss up was Question 4, which the poll found voters split on: 43% both in favor and opposed with 14% remaining undecided.

“This ballot question only enjoys majoritarian support among a small number of demographic and political groups in the state that include young people, Democrats, liberals and Biden voters,” Tatishe Nteta, a professor of political science at UMass Amherst and director of the poll, said in a statement. “Older voters, independents, Republicans and parents are particularly opposed to this ballot question, and given the high turnout among these groups in particular, this does not bode well for those who seek to make Massachusetts the third state in the nation to make these substances legal.” 

Two other states have legalized psilocybin for supervised adult use: Oregon, where voters passed a ballot initiative in 2020, and Colorado, which did the same in 2022. And supporters and opponents of Question 4 have pointed to those examples as both positive examples and cautionary tales.

A spokesperson for the “no” campaign, which is called the Coalition for Safe Communities, has said the campaign doesn’t question the medical benefits psychedelics can impart. Rather, the campaign has argued that Question 4 wouldn’t actually provide mental-health services that veterans and other in-need populations could easily access. When I spoke to the coalition’s spokesperson, Chris Keohan, for a piece I reported for New England Public Media, he told me that in Oregon it can cost thousands of dollars to go to one psychedelic treatment session at a licensed facility.

“To give our service members the false hope that they would be able to have access to this is shameful,” he said.

Keohan said the coalition also opposes the part of the ballot question that would allow mushroom home grows in rooms as large as 144 square feet. The amount of mushrooms that can be grown in that space, he said, is “astronomical,” leaving open the ability of a black market to flourish.

“It’s dangerous,” he said. “It puts children and pets in homes in danger. It puts the general public in danger because one in three people that have done mushrooms in the past year says that they’ve also driven while high on that product in the past year.”

But supporters of Question 4 say those are just scare tactics based on stigma.

“There’s a lot of fear and misinformation that is unnecessary,” said Michou Olivera, who works as a psychedelic facilitator, researcher, educator, and self-trained mycologist in western Massachusetts. 

Olivera said she, too, has concerns with how Oregon rolled out its legalization, describing it as a “profiteering mindset” where treatment can cost $5,000. But she said that Question 4 is an opportunity to get people the help they need and to destigmatize, and decriminalize, natural medicines. Lawmakers will craft regulations for the industry if the initiative passes, and Olivera said they have a big opportunity to create a model that will benefit low-income residents, too. Voting “no,” Olivera said, is “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”  

“You can’t squash a bill that is designed to allow safe access to a process that is helping so many people,” she said. 

The campaign to support the ballot question, known as Massachusetts for Mental Health Options, has big money behind it. State campaign finance records show wealthy executives, companies, and others have poured more than $7 million in donations and in-kind contributions into the campaign since last July, when organizers first started working to get the question on the ballot.

In total, the biggest donor to the “yes” campaign has been All One God Faith Inc., the company behind Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, whose top executive, David Bronner, is a psychedelics advocate. In total, the company has donated $1.25 million to the campaign. The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a nonprofit that has sponsored psychedelic-assisted therapy research and where Bonner sits on the board, has given $550,000.

Corporate leaders from the Boston tech industry and business circles have also given large donations. They include $600,000 from Dharmesh Shah, the cofounder of the software company HubSpot, and $200,000 from Dave Balter, the CEO of Flipside Crypto. Mike Salguero, the founder and CEO of the meat delivery company ButcherBox, put $375,000 toward the campaign, nearly half of which he gave in the month of October alone.

Other wealthy contributors from outside the state include Toms Shoes founder Blake Mycoskie, who gave $500,000 last year, and the media mogul Austin Hearst, who gave the campaign $450,000 last year. 

Another big name on the list of backers is the actress Eliza Dushku Palandjian of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” fame. A Watertown native, she has spoken publicly about finding healing from trauma related to a childhood sexual assault after taking part in a guided psychedelic session with mushrooms and MDMA. 

A feeling “of being reborn into the world in this safe and loving way,” was how she described it to Boston magazine earlier this year. “I finally surrendered and began to feel a release and a sense of peace and security and calm whooshing through me.”

The campaign against the ballot question has raised far less money — $106,675, all of which came in during the month of October. 

Nearly all of that money came from the organization Smart Approaches to Marijuana, also known as SAM Inc. Founded by former Rhode Island congressman Patrick Joseph Kennedy II, the nonprofit is “dedicated to promoting healthy marijuana policies that do not legalize drugs,” according to its website, and has opposed state-level initiatives to legalize cannabis.

The Massachusetts Psychiatric Society, which represents over 1,500 psychiatric physicians statewide, has expressed “strong opposition” to the question. The society has raised concerns about possible harms to patients and the public, and has said that the legalization push is fueled by “powerful financial interests” like big tech that “stand to profit” from legalization. The organization has said that while early research into psychedelic treatments is promising, “further studies are needed to assess their effectiveness in acute care and to explore potential long-term benefits and risks.” 

“The reality is that we simply do not have clinically valid, long-term research studies on these substances to understand their true risks or benefits,” Nassir Ghaemi, the society’s president, said in a press release.  “What we do know is that hallucinogens can lead to severe and unpredictable psychiatric reactions and can endanger public health.” 

The “yes” camp, meanwhile, counts among its supporters several local lawmakers including state Rep. Carlos González and state Sen. Adam Gomez, both Springfield Democrats. 

State Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa, D-Northampton, has also backed the initiative after working the previous year to pass a bill to decriminalize similar psychedelic substances. She told The Shoestring that a constituent had approached her with his story of how microdosing helped him cope with anxiety and depression in college and was the reason he was able to stay in school instead of dropping out. After talking to doctors and experts, she said she was amazed at how many people showed up to testify in support of the bill based on their personal experiences with psychedelics.

Sabadosa said she has certainly heard the concerns about affordability and other issues. But she cautioned that voting “no” will stymie efforts at decriminalization for a long time. She pointed to other issues that failed at the ballot box in previous years — patient-to-nurse ratios, ranked-choice voting, and “death with dignity,” for example — and noted that many lawmakers took that as a sign that state residents didn’t want to see them prioritize those issues. That is frustrating to voters and lawmakers who do care about those issues, she said, but a defeated ballot question ends up sending a strong message.

“You are telling the Legislature you don’t want us to do anything with a ‘no’ vote,” she said.

Another group that worked to pass city council resolutions across the state to end arrests for natural psychedelics — including successes in Easthampton, Northampton, and Amherst — was Bay Staters for Natural Medicine. However, that group has come out in opposition to Question 4, which has fractured the movement together with other allegations levied against the organization and its leadership.

Veterans and their mental health have played a central role in the messaging on the “yes” and “no” campaigns, too.

In September, the “yes” campaign held a kick-off event in Springfield at the Bilingual Veterans Outreach Centers. Gumersindo Gomez, the organization’s executive director and the father of Adam Gomez, spoke in support of getting veterans access to help dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder or other mental health conditions.

“These people gave their best for our nation,” he said. “We have to do the best that we can for them, and I think this approach that we’re taking in the state with Question 4, to help that issue, is a winner.”

Other veterans, however, have more complicated feelings, like Easthampton’s Donovan Lee. 

A local member of Veterans for Peace who said they were speaking individually and not for the organization, Lee said that they have concerns about big business capturing the regulatory process to benefit their bottom lines. They would also like to see more Indigenous representation in the decision making, but that the ballot initiative and campaign in support of it haven’t made that a priority. Under the ballot question’s language, the governor, attorney general, and treasurer will ultimately appoint the commissioners tasked with crafting regulations, Lee pointed out. 

(Disclosure: Lee is the spouse of Shoestring investigative reporter and administrator Shelby Lee.)

“Anyone who’s struggling with PTSD should have access to these things if they feel like they’re a help to them or might be a help to them,” Lee said. “And in my experience, I have been helped by the use of psychedelics to deal with some of the mental struggles that I have … But I think it won’t necessarily be any easier for veterans to access these types of therapies unless they’re independently wealthy at this point or carry insurance outside of the VA.” 

As for how Lee is voting, they said Thursday they’re still — like many in Massachusetts — undecided.

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