How New Mexico passed a psilocybin bill
The new episode of Ground Game is live, and if you have ever watched a good bill quietly die in committee, this one is for you.
I sat down with New Mexico State Senator Jeff Steinborn, chief sponsor of Senate Bill 219. New Mexico just became the first state legislature in the country to pass a state-based psilocybin access program, no ballot measure required. That is a big deal, and how it happened is even more instructive than the fact that it did.
Jeff walks through the whole thing with real candor:
The constituent phone call, one week before session, that started everything
Why he put the Department of Health in the room and let them help write every word of the bill
The first committee hearing where combat veterans who had never testified in their lives showed up, poured their hearts out, and turned it into a unanimous do-pass vote
The moment a Republican he assumed was a hard no started explaining neuroplasticity back to him
We also get into the advocacy fundamentals that too many passionate people skip: find the decision maker's current homework assignment, do it for them, and hand it over. Be brief. Have an ask. Fit it on one page.
Then we turn to the part that hits closest to home for us in Oregon: how the program is paid for. New Mexico is not asking licensees to carry the full cost of the program on their backs. The state appropriates the operating budget, which keeps licensing fees reasonable, and they built a $630,000 equity fund so people who cannot afford care can still get it.
Compare that to where Oregon sits today, with the Oregon Health Authority proposing to double licensing fees. Jeff and I dig into why the fee-based model we launched with made sense at the time, why it is no longer sustainable, and what it looks like to reframe psilocybin therapy as public health and a real cost-containment tool rather than a luxury for the wealthy.
He even throws down a challenge worth hearing: use the $50 million in ARPA-H research funding to study the long-term economic impact on state behavioral health budget and goals, with Oregon and New Mexico as the proving grounds.
Whether you are trying to move something in your own state or you just care about where Oregon's program goes next, this is the conversation I wish someone had handed me 15 years ago.