Colorado lawmakers consider bill to fast-track availability of pharmaceutical grade psychedelics
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) could approve the first prescription psychedelic therapy as early as this year, and state lawmakers are scrambling to ensure Coloradans will be able to access it immediately.
The legislature passed a law in 2022 that allows psilocybin to be prescribed in Colorado once it's cleared by the FDA and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), but the law applies only to psilocybin.
Lawmakers would need to bring a bill to reschedule any other psychedelic approved, which takes time. So, they introduced a bill (SB26-031) to fast-track all Schedule I drugs approved for pharmaceutical use.
Luke Schartiger is among those supporting the bill. A combat veteran and former law enforcement officer, he says psychedelics changed his life; "I was so stuck in this state of hopelessness."
He says, for years, he suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, depression and anxiety, and tried every treatment available.
"It was when my ex-wife filed for divorce is when it was like, 'This is my rock bottom.' I started looking for alternative healing methods," Schartiger recalled.
Coloradans had just decriminalized psilocybin. Schartiger says that after one treatment, he was able to process the trauma he'd buried for years.
"I found a way to find peace," he said.
He wants others to know peace, too, which is why he's urging state lawmakers to pass the bill, which would align state and federal drug schedules so any Schedule I drug cleared by the FDA and DEA would receive automatic clearance in Colorado.
There are 8 clinical trials underway.
"The trials have been incredibly promising for PTSD, anxiety and depression," says State Sen. Dafna Michaelson Jenet, sponsor of the bill.
She says the FDA could approve a drug with the active ingredient in LSD as early as next year.
"What we're looking at is a one dose medication where you get treatment one time for a disease that may have been debilitating your whole life, and walk out and live a typical life," she explained.
Help can't come soon enough, with 17 veterans a day ending their lives to end the suffering.
Schartiger made a vow to leave no one behind, and he says he's keeping it: "If we're going to send kids to war to fight and die, then we need to take care of them when they come back."
Under the bill, a psychedelic cleared by the FDA and DEA would be regulated like any other prescription in Colorado. Some of the drugs in trials now require administration in a clinical setting.
Unlike magic mushrooms used in Colorado healing centers, pharmaceutical grade psychedelics would be synthetically produced in a lab and have a very precise dosage.
The bill passed its first committee unanimously.
