Colorado’s Natural Medicine Board, charged with developing regulations for Colorado’s psychedelics industry, began its work yesterday by establishing a framework for what is shaping up to be a long, hot summer of regulatory work.
The board is responsible for making recommendations surrounding public health, harm reduction, training medical providers and first responders, and regulated access to natural psychedelic medicines. Inherent in each recommendation are very complicated conversations that the 15-member body needs to have ahead of its September 30 deadline.
“It’s important to consider that this is an indigenous medicine that is being brought into the modern world,” board member Sofia Chavez, a natural medicine practitioner, said during the body’s first meeting on April 13. “That has to be front-and-center for our work.”
To organize the board’s efforts, Katina Banks, a lawyer who previously served on the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, was appointed as the board’s chair. Joshua Goodwin, the CEO of Operation True North Colorado, a mental health company for military veterans, was appointed as the vice chair.
The board also organized itself into six subcommittees to formulate the regulations. Each subcommittee will focus on topics such as public health, education, occupational licensing, public safety, harm reduction, and outreach to indigenous and religious communities.
The subcommittees are expected to meet at least biweekly. Staff from the Department of Regulatory Agencies, which oversees the advisory board’s work, recommended that the full board meet at least once per month to review the work of the subcommittees.
During the meeting, equity and inclusion of indigenous or religious voices became a central focus of organizing the subcommittees.
However, finding a consensus on how to best include those voices proved challenging.
Billy Wayne, a public health lawyer, suggested rolling the subcommittee responsible for indigenous and religious outreach into the remaining five groups so that indigenous and religious voices are included in all the work. Wayne said he worried about creating an unfair burden for the indigenous and religious outreach group where they would need to review the rest of the body’s work.
“Incorporating the indigenous community in our work is the most critical thing our committee can consider,” Wayne said. “I just want to make sure those values are embedded seamlessly throughout the process.”
Board member Lundy Nelson advocated for keeping the indigenous and religious outreach subcommittee as its own group. They argued that the equity lens might be diminished otherwise. The board ultimately decided to keep the group separate but left open the idea to amend the framework later if needed.
Other members like Clarissa Pinkola Estés, a Native American post-trauma recovery specialist, voiced concerns about the subcommittee process. Estés said she worried the board would become siloed and asked other members to consider taking a more “relational” approach.
One focus for the board going forward should be data collection, Wayne added. That includes finding meaningful ways to measure the efficacy of natural medicines and collecting the necessary data without invading someone’s privacy.
“If we believe these medicines have promise, then the work we’re doing right now will set a precedent for people across the country, and around the world,” Wayne said. “We need to collect meaningful data about their efficacy., or else we’re wasting this opportunity that we have.”
