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Senate Minority Leader Brian W. Jones (R-San Diego) sent a letter to Governor Newsom urging a “friendly veto” of Senate Bill 58 (Wiener, D-San Francisco). If not vetoed, SB 58 will decriminalize the personal use of specified hallucinogens for people over age 21 starting in January 2025. You can read the letter here.
“While I am sympathetic to the potential use of some psychedelics for mental and medical health treatment, particularly for veterans with PTSD, this bill is not that,” said Leader Jones. "It’s really the state greenlighting the unsupervised, ‘self-medicating’ use of hallucinogens like magic mushrooms.”
Specifically, SB 58 would decriminalize the personal use of dimethyltryptamine (DMT), mescaline, psilocybin, and psilocin by people age 21 or older, however, the drugs remain illegal under federal law.
“As currently written, this bill will put people’s lives in jeopardy,” continued Jones. “The Governor should issue a ‘friendly veto’ of SB 58 and leave the door open for future legislation that allows for closely supervised, therapeutic medical use of some of these drugs.”
Law enforcement officials and organizations throughout the state have voiced their concerns on this measure. One letter of opposition sent on behalf of the California Association of Highway Patrolmen, summed up the reality of the situation very clearly, saying “SB 58 is an extremely harmful bill, because it will put people’s lives at risk.”