Josh Kappel Discusses Psilocybin Mushrooms on The Real Dirt with Chip Baker Podcast
May 27, 2020
VS partner Josh Kappel recently talked about entheogens, mainly psilocybin mushrooms, with host Chip Baker on his The Real Dirt podcast.
During the podcast, Josh discussed his law and policy work with entheogens, including his work on the Denver psilocybin decriminalization initiative.
Said Josh, "A passionate group of people in Denver wanted to decriminalize psilocybin and asked Vicente Sederberg how to write the law. We took the idea straight out of Denver’s Sanctuary City law. (Denver has a law that prohibits the city from spending any money on enforcing federal immigration laws.) We thought it was a great template for a psilocybin law, since advocates didn’t want the city to spend any money on psilocybin enforcement. So that’s what we have. It is a three-part law: 1) the lowest law enforcement priority measure; 2) the city is banned from spending any money to enforce the state law; and 3) requires an oversight review committee. It's not legalized. It’s still a crime under state law and still a crime under federal law, but for the city of Denver, it’s the lowest law enforcement priority to go after someone who’s personally possessing or propagating psilocybin."
They also discussed Decriminalize Nature's entheogen decriminalization efforts in Oakland.
"I think we’ll see more communities loosen the prohibition on nature, on the entheogens and the mushrooms." – Josh Kappel