‘The war on drugs failed’: California lawmaker will push to decriminalize psychedelics

The movement to reform drug policy celebrated a number of victories in the recent election, with voters across America opting to legalize marijuana and decriminalize narcotics in an unprecedented overhaul.

Now, a California lawmaker has announced he will take on the arduous battle to decriminalize psychedelics in the state, citing Oregon, which voted to decriminalize hard drugs and legalize psilocybin, and the District of Columbia, which has decriminalized psychedelics, as inspiration.

“The war on drugs has been an abject failure,” Scott Wiener, the California state senator who plans to introduce the legislation, told the Guardian. How marijuana legalization made strides across the US in this election Read more To drug policy activists who doubted ever seeing their efforts take hold on a legislative level, the moment marks a sea change in the political will to overturn America’s failed drug policies.

Should Wiener find success when he introduces the bill in the next legislative session, California would be the largest state to decriminalize psychedelics in the US. “We have come a really long ways,” said David Hodges, the founder of Zide Door Church of Entheogenic Plants, an Oakland-based mushroom and cannabis club. […]

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