Oregon's Jackson County Hosts Hearing On Amendments For Psilocybin Services Centers, 'Opt-Out' Vote

“Never a dull moment in the psychedelics space,” says Silo Wellness SILFF founder and CEO Mike Arnold. The Oregon lawyer will be testifying on Thursday, November 3’s Jackson County Oregon Planning Commission’s morning hearing in Medford discussing amendments to the county’s land development ordinance to add psilocybin therapy and retreat time, place and manner regulations.

Arnold says that it is effectively illegal to ban rural psilocybin service centers (corresponding to approved Ballot Measure 109) without a public vote. Nonetheless, that is what Jackson County seems to be attempting to do: “To backdoor a psilocybin prohibition behind the backs of the voters,” said the Silo Wellness founder.

How and why did the situation get to this point? In October, the Jackson County Planning Commission emailed a notice to property owners for the aforementioned upcoming hearing to amend the Jackson County Development Ordinance to “add Psilocybin Time, Place, and Manner Restrictions” (TPM). 

As Arnold explains, “The county cleverly complied with the bare minimum of the law offering inspection at no cost of ‘all documents and evidence relied upon’ or to be ‘provided at no cost,’ while not publicly sharing the proposed ordinance’s text or “any hint of the radical proposal that it is.” 

That text can be found, after a thorough search, at the county’s website. “While everyone is busy working on the opt-out campaign this was slipped by the local advocates. Consequently, no alarm bells have been raised,” commented Arnold.

The document states that “all Psilocybin Service Centers are limited to General Commercial zoning districts.” Now, the Jackson County map shows only a handful of unincorporated properties that would be available for psilocybin service centers as located within the urban growth boundary abutting the city limits or near I-5, explained Arnold. 

The lawyer’s view is clear: “Jackson County is effectively attempting to outlaw psychedelic nature retreats without a public vote.”

For now, Silo Wellness has only entered into leasing properties via letters of intent. But other companies have already purchased rural properties for considerable amounts of money and invested significant capital improvements. According to Arnold, if they were then already at great risk of an opt-out vote, now they have to face this very real risk factor. 

Arnold said “this is Oregon cannabis 2.0,” and there lies the reason why he advised other local Oregon psychedelic entrepreneurs to beware of effectively buying or leasing properties. 

“We just can’t afford to commit and be wrong. I will never forget the horror stories from Oregon recreational cannabis in 2016 when folks bought properties and did substantial capital improvements with greenhouses or indoor grows just for the county to come in later and prevent cultivation for that particular class of properties,” he explained.

Photo courtesy of Chones and Cannabis_Pic on Shutterstock and Wikimedia Commons.