Missouri could be one step closer to legalizing medical mushrooms or psilocybin.
House Bill 1159 is being debated in the Missouri Senate. The bill proposes a trial take place testing the effects of psilocybin on veterans to aid in post-traumatic stress disorder, mental illness and trauma.
Trials from Ohio State University and JAMA have found success.
"I have a lot of friends who served in the military, who served active duty in the military," said Josh Mitchem, CEO of CLOVR Cannabis. "I know what PTSD does to them. I have a daughter who suffers from depression, and reading these reports, being able to have something that could help them is why I have the drive."
Mitchem helped advocate for marijuana legalization in Missouri and is now working to do the same with medical mushrooms. Although, he thinks it'll take more effort to pass psilocybin use.
"There’s a large swath of the population who use marijuana and who have for years," Mitchem said. "That swath isn’t nearly as big when you talk about mushrooms. It’s a much smaller group. A lot of people say, 'Well, once you do marijuana, you just go out there and try every drug out there.' It’s not the case."
Introduced in February, the bill passed the committee unanimously, with both sides of the aisle interested.
"I think that’s why you get a lot of the Republicans on board with this," Mitchem said. "It's only about veterans and about PTSD and the things that they suffer because what they went through for us. Whereas on the Democrat side, they’re a little more liberal anyway."
Mitchem hopes the bill passes by the end of this legislative session on May 13.
He says it will take time to find participants, conduct the trial and share data, so the House will most likely not see anything about legalizing medical mushrooms for about a year and a half.
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