How to Regulate Psychedelics

As a regulatory agency, you aim to stay ahead of the curve, ready to anticipate legislative shifts and adapt quickly. As a cornerstone of state planning, your anticipation is critical to effectively implementing evolving psychedelic policy.

Our National Psychedelic Landscape Assessment (NPLA) reveals where psychedelic policy stands in the US and what lessons regulatory agencies can draw from this. Scroll for key insights.

3 Key NPLA Takeaways for Regulators

1. Embrace Pilot Programs

Psychedelic legislation can become vast quickly, an outlook that scares away key votes. Instead, regulatory agencies should be eager to encourage and measure the efficacies of pilot programs. These programs have many advantages:

  • Populations in the most need of psychedelics are often able to access them

  • Easily measurable, providing irrefutable data

  • Begin to lay the groundwork for successive versions

2. Engage key agents early

Regulatory bodies should be eager to talk with their Governor, legislators, and other state agencies to gain a full, functional understanding of how a proposed psychedelic program would operate. These discussions are critical for ensuring both passage and effective implementation of psychedelic programs because they:

  • Alleviate beauracratic ineffeciency

  • Align key actors with clear steps for post-passage implementation

  • Foster positive relations that make adaptations easier to acheive down the line

3. Encourage sustainable funding

Stewarding a psychedelic bill means ensuring its success not only in the present but also for years to come. A vital part of this is establishing creative, sustainable funding mechanisms to support these psychedelic programs in the long-term. Examples of these are:

  • Guaranteeing a long-term state funding commitment that keeps programs not just afloat but thriving

  • Seeking partnerships across sectors, as well as with universities to diversify funding sources

  • Utilizing already existing government funding programs, like funds allocated for behavioral health goals

Download the NPLA

Our NPLA provides much more than tips for regulators. It’s an outlook of where we’re at with psychedelic policy combined with insights on where we’re going. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive the full report.

Want personalized help? Reach out directly to the Center to learn how you can safely regulate psychedelics.