Oregon and Colorado psilocybin programs explained: what the two state systems are, and how they differ from Canada

The Oregon and Colorado psilocybin programs are the two US state systems for regulated psilocybin, and they are often described loosely as “legal” or “decriminalized”. The primary documents are more specific than that. This article describes what each state’s own agencies say the programmes are, when they started, what they permit and prohibit, and what the agencies have published about how they have run. It then sets out, briefly, how this differs from the position in Canada.

What are the Oregon and Colorado psilocybin programs?

Both are state-level licensing systems created by voters. Oregon’s health authority says Ballot Measure 109 passed in November 2020, is now codified as ORS 475A, and directs the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) to license and regulate psilocybin products and psilocybin services (OHA, Oregon Psilocybin Services). In Colorado, the Secretary of State’s record lists Proposition 122, “Access to Natural Psychedelic Substances”, on the general election ballot of 8 November 2022 (Colorado Secretary of State). The state’s Natural Medicine Division, part of the Department of Revenue, calls the resulting law the Natural Medicine Health Act and says it was followed by SB23-290, which gave the Department of Revenue the job of licensing and regulating the businesses (Natural Medicine Division, About Us).

The core idea in both is the same: a licensed professional supervises a session in a licensed place, and the product comes from a licensed, tested supply chain. The details, and who regulates what, differ. The table below compares the two as their own agencies describe them.

How does Oregon’s program work, and what does it not do?

OHA lists the licence types it issues: facilitator, manufacturer, service centre operator and laboratory testing, plus worker permits. It says it began accepting licence applications on 2 January 2023 and that service centres began opening to clients in the summer of 2023 (OHA, Oregon Psilocybin Services).

Under OHA’s description of the services, a client must be 21 or older. No prescription or referral from a medical or clinical provider is needed. A client completes a preparation session with a licensed facilitator before any administration session, psilocybin may be accessed only at a licensed service centre during an administration session with a licensed facilitator present, and an integration session is offered afterwards (OHA, What are Psilocybin Services?). The statute says the same about location: “An administration session must be held at a psilocybin service center” (ORS 475A.355(2)) (Oregon Legislature, ORS chapter 475A).

Can Oregon cities opt out, and does the program change federal law?

Cities and counties have a say. ORS 475A.718 lets a city or county governing body adopt an ordinance, referred to voters at the next statewide general election, that prohibits or allows psilocybin manufacturers and service-centre operators in its area. While a prohibition stands, OHA stops licensing the affected premises, and a city or county that adopts a prohibition may not tax or fee the manufacturing or sale of psilocybin products (ORS chapter 475A).

Federal law is untouched. OHA’s own page says psilocybin remains a “Schedule I substance under the federal Controlled Substances Act” (OHA, What are Psilocybin Services?). The statute adds that the programme may not be construed to require a person to violate federal law, or to exempt a person from federal law or obstruct its enforcement (ORS 475A.215(6) and (7)) (ORS chapter 475A). The federal listing itself appears in 21 CFR 1308.11(d), items (29) psilocybin and (30) psilocyn, in the eCFR version dated 21 September 2026 (eCFR).

How does Colorado’s program work, and what does it not do?

Colorado has two parts that are easy to blur. One is a regulated system of licensed businesses and licensed facilitators. The other is a set of personal-use provisions that sit outside the licensed system. The division’s FAQ says that regulated natural medicine is mostly available to participants at a healing centre, and that in limited circumstances facilitators may provide sessions at another approved location, always with product sourced from a licensed business (Natural Medicine Division, FAQ).

Responsibility is split. The Department of Revenue’s Natural Medicine Division licenses healing centres, cultivations, manufacturers, testing facilities and their owners and employees, while the Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA) licenses facilitators (Natural Medicine Division, FAQ). The division’s About page says it began accepting licence applications on 31 December 2024 and approved the first healing-centre licence in April 2025 (About Us). The licensed programme covers psilocybin and psilocin; the division’s 2026 legislative summary notes that ibogaine provisions passed in 2026 depend on funding and that the division has no implementation timeline (2026 Legislation Summary).

On the personal-use side, the FAQ says adults 21 and over may share with other adults in certain contexts, that no payment is allowed for the natural medicine itself (payment is permitted for bona fide harm-reduction or support services used alongside sharing), that the sale of any natural medicine is prohibited, and that there may be no open and public display or consumption (Natural Medicine Division, FAQ). It describes these as separate from regulated sessions. We deliberately do not summarise the cultivation provisions here.

The licensed side also has to be read with care about money. In a bulletin dated 1 May 2026, the division said the law prohibits the sale of regulated natural medicine to participants, that separate transactions for the medicine apart from the service were in its view not permitted, and that the fee for services includes the cost of the medicine (Industry Bulletin, 1 May 2026). The division added that it saw this as a statutory issue requiring legislative change. The Colorado legislature then passed HB26-1325, which the division’s summary says was signed on 4 June 2026 and created a “limited sales license” for transactions that precede an administration session. The summary also says the act narrowed the personal-use provisions: it bans advertising natural medicine and using harm-reduction or support services as a front for sales (2026 Legislation Summary). The division’s home page says emergency rule revisions implementing limited sales licences took effect on 12 August 2026 (Natural Medicine Division).

Colorado’s system also does not alter federal law. We did not find a statement on the division’s pages about federal scheduling, and the federal listing quoted above is unchanged on the 21 September 2026 eCFR version (eCFR).

What is the timeline in each state?

The Colorado dates come from two division documents that do not describe the same milestone: the annual report dates the first business licence to 31 March 2025, while the About page dates the first healing-centre licence to April 2025. They are consistent if the March licence was another business type, but the documents do not say.

What has been reported publicly about how the programs have run?

Both states publish data, and the figures are narrow. They count licences, sessions and reported incidents. They are administrative records, not studies of whether anyone benefited, and they should not be read as evidence about outcomes.

Oregon

Service centres have had to collect client data under SB 303 (2023) since 1 January 2025, with quarterly reporting to OHA. Clients can opt out of having their data submitted (OHA, SB 303 and Data Collection). OHA’s 2025 Year-End Data Summary, covering 1 January to 31 December 2025, reports 5,935 clients served, 4,628 individual administration sessions and 747 group sessions. It lists approved licences or permits of 377 facilitators, 25 service centres, 11 manufacturers and 1 laboratory, plus 197 worker permits (OHA, 2025 Year-End Data Summary). Its 2024 review gave 345 licensed facilitators and 31 licensed service centres as of 31 December 2024 (OHA, 2024 Year in Review). The two documents may not count licences the same way, and they do not explain the lower service-centre figure, so we draw no conclusion from the difference.

On safety, the same summary reports 13 emergency-services contacts by facilitators and service centres, no product safety recalls under the regulated model, 51 complaints and 60 investigations, and 22 final disciplinary orders. Adverse reactions are reported as counts of clients: 6 adverse and 7 severe adverse behavioural reactions, 13 adverse and 2 severe adverse medical reactions, and 10 post-session reactions. It also lists 258 denials of services (OHA, 2025 Year-End Data Summary). OHA’s 2025 Year in Review expresses the emergency-contact count as 0.2% of clients (OHA, 2025 Year in Review). These counts depend on what service centres report, and the document says some values are suppressed to protect confidentiality.

Oregon also changed its rules while operating. OHA’s 2025 review says it ran rulemaking in 2025 for rule adjustments and for HB 2387, a 2025 law it calls “Dual Licensure”, which it describes as bridging psilocybin services and the health and behavioural-health system (OHA, 2025 Year in Review). The Legislature’s page for ORS chapter 475A also says that some sections were amended or repealed in its 2026 regular session, without listing them in the text we read (Oregon Legislature). We did not trace those 2026 changes.

Colorado

The Department of Revenue’s annual report, published on 2 February 2026, gives application figures as of 30 January 2026: 304 owner and handler applications received and 280 licences issued, and 80 business applications received and 55 licences issued. It gives an average of 100 days from receipt of a business application to conditional approval in 2025 (2025 Annual Natural Medicine Implementation Report). The division’s home page lists approved licences as of 9 October 2026: 11 standard and 35 micro healing centres, 15 standard cultivations, 8 product manufacturers, 1 testing facility, and 128 owner and 206 handler licences (Natural Medicine Division).

The report’s session data is explicitly preliminary. Because healing centres submit data only with licence renewal, the division asked them to share 2025 data voluntarily. The report lists 109 participants served from August to December 2025, in five counties (Boulder, Douglas, Eagle, Jefferson and Pitkin), in 89 solo sessions and 17 sessions serving two or more people (2025 Annual Natural Medicine Implementation Report). The report also describes SB 25-297, signed on 3 June 2025, which moved and expanded data collection and outcome measurement to the state health department. Oregon’s year of full reporting and Colorado’s partial half-year are not comparable.

How does this differ from Canada?

The short version is that Health Canada’s page describes no licensed service-centre system of this kind. It says that the production, sale and possession of magic mushrooms are illegal in Canada, that psilocybin products have not been assessed by Health Canada for safety, efficacy or quality, and that there are no approved therapeutic products containing psilocybin in Canada or elsewhere. It describes narrower routes: practitioners may request access through the Special Access Program for certain emergency treatment situations, individuals cannot apply directly, and access is assessed case by case (Health Canada, page dated 2026-10-20). The page we read does not describe any licensed consumer-facing service.

Two structural differences follow. First, in the United States the licence programmes are state law layered over a federal prohibition that the states cannot lift, which is why Oregon’s own agency says psilocybin remains federally Schedule I. In Canada, psilocybin is controlled by the federal Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, and exceptions are authorized through federal channels (Health Canada). Second, a US state can create a licensing agency and a service model by ballot measure and statute, whereas Canada’s federal framework, as Health Canada describes it, authorizes activity through research, exceptional access and exemptions. For the Canadian detail, see our explainer on Canada’s law, the side-by-side comparison of laws around the world, the Special Access Program and how psilocybin became illegal in Canada. For the US federal and state layers in more detail, see are magic mushrooms legal in the United States.

What could we not verify?

• Colorado’s statutes and rules themselves: we read the Natural Medicine Division’s FAQ, bulletin and legislative summary, not C.R.S. title 44, article 50 or the 18-18-434 text.
• Whether any referendum petition was filed against HB26-1325. The division’s home page says the related emergency rules took effect on 12 August 2026, and we found no sign of a petition, but we did not check.
• Which sections of ORS 475A the Oregon Legislature amended or repealed in 2026, and the figures in Oregon’s live Data Dashboard, which sit in a Power BI dashboard we could not read as text. A 2026 data file is listed on the dashboard page, which we did not open.
• Any 2026 Oregon or Colorado year-end data: the most recent complete annual report we read covers 2025.
• The prescription and referral position in Colorado, the other 48 states, and how any other jurisdiction treats these programmes.

This is a snapshot of 10 October 2026. The agency pages in the sources list are the places to re-check.

Shroomverse sells mushroom products. This article is general information about psilocybin law in two US states and Canada. It is not legal, medical or purchasing advice, and it does not encourage anyone to use drugs.