GOOD.

Something out of Montpelier I can get behind! That's rarer and rarer these days.

Only took 74 years to get legal cannabis all setup, this ought to fly through Montpelier!

Lol Phil Scott ain’t passing that…

I mean ok, but that doesn’t mean anything if it’s also still illegal at the federal level. Federal > state > local laws.

Is this one of those bills that has no chance of passing and exists just for one side to say “we tried.”

Hope not because drugs should be legalized but it’s the season of bills that have a snowballs chance in hell of passing.

Decriminalize some drugs, but fuck meth. Keep that shit illegal and crack down on it hard.

I fear you are correct. It will take another 100 years before “we” are ready for this.

I doubt it will pass,but it's a good start.

It means something! Cannabis is still illegal federally, and yet we have dispensaries. It's not perfect but it's not nothing.

Excellent idea. The fent and heroin problem won’t be solved without drastic measures, and undermining the black market with government regulating and distribution of heroin is an important step.

Similar law passed in Oregon, but that was thru a referendum.

Good if they do that they can release the non violent people who were arrested for drugs from prison and they can rejoin the work force

I agree with legalizing marijuana. I don't use it, but I don't see that it is causing major problems like alcohol.

I would accept supervised use of psychedelic drugs. I am not interested in them. I have read about some uses that have a benefit for some people. It is therapy. I would also agree to de-criminalize use of these.

There are other drugs that I just cannot see as recreational drugs. Opioid drugs have caused some major problems with addiction, overdose, leading to wrecked lives and death.

Good! Psilocybin therapy changed everything for me in regards to seeking treatment for PTSD - hope to see it more prevalent in the future.

Reminder: decriminalization does not mean you are given legal protections. Even if this did pass, you can still be prosecuted under federal laws.

Omg don’t do this in Washington we do this as well and literally everyone is a zombie. This is a quick way to degrade a state and have lawlessness and crime everywhere

The point of legalizing opiates and opioids is not to make them recreational drugs, but to make it legal to help wean addicts off them in supervised situations. Quitting addictions to narcotics cold-turkey is incredibly dangerous physically, but currently the only legal way to quit. Addiction is a disease; making the treatment legal is important.

We don’t have 100 more years to kick the can.

Tell that to our law makers

Worry about your own fucking state.

If you’re caught using any of the drugs on this list, you just won’t go directly to prison.

They’re de-criminalized. It’s not a criminal offense to use drugs anymore, and that’s different from legalization.

Legalization and decriminalization are different things.

Why are you here?

[deleted]

This is a welcome bill.

Hopefully though they won't mess it up like the cannabis thing. Prices are still double the MA prices for some things.

Moving to a New England state that won’t repeat what Washington is doing crime everywhere. We allowed drugs and it’s a mess. I believe certain things should be allowed but not everything. We have a completely comatose society because of these drugs

You need to realize that Washington culture and Vermont culture are entirely polar.

This bill is being passed so drug addicts can receive appropriate rehab care.

Fed will likely go the same route it has with states that legalized Marijuanna - they will no longer pursue charges for simple possession.

Eh, never know.

Even states like Texas are easing up restrictions on psychedelic research.

Every study has been extremely promising so far, and a lot of the drove is treating veterans with PTSD (VA is currently studying MDMA and Psilocybin) which is a cause Conservatives like to pretend to support.

Reminds me of the bills Republicans in Congress introduce to abolish the EPA or Department of Education.

Decrimilized at the state level does nothing for the federal level.

Sure! But until then this is just more feel good legislation.

> One, H.439, would strike psilocybin, mescaline and peyote from Vermont’s definition of hallucinogenic drugs, effectively allowing the substances by removing them from state control. That measure is sponsored by Rep. Brian Cina (P/D), who has introduced similar legislation in the past.

> The other proposal, S.114, from Sen. Martine Gulick (D) would remove only psilocybin from the state’s definition of hallucinogens.

that seems like a silly way to go about it lol

I'm all for decriminalizing drugs, but shrooms are what they are...

No way phil will decriminalize drugs bro…he’s obsessed with cannabis sobriety checks…there’s a better chance of Ethan Allen coming back from the dead..

>I would accept supervised use of psychedelic drugs.

Out of curiosity, why not unsupervised?

Legalize shrooms they’ve been found to be safe and almost impossible to OD on. All psychedelics have incredibly low usage rates and addiction to them is non existent. (Fake tabs are a completely different game and I do think all “LSD” should be tested since 90% of it is random ass RCs from Asia)

However all hard drugs should be kept illegal and the people who use them should absolutely be held accountable for purchasing and especially distributing community ruining drugs. It didn’t work in Washington, Oregon, or California and all it did was perpetuate a system that has zero accountability and enables degenerate addicts to further ruin the community.

You’re not helping them, you’re making them live carefree at the expense of everyone else. Is it shocking to see that HIV, HEP-C rates still rise even when theres safe injection sites? No. They’re still going to throw their needles on the street and share the same needle. Your “unhoused neighbors” don’t care about you, they’re not part of this community. The overwhelming majority aren’t from the state and came here because they know there are gullible bleeding-heart individuals who will believe whatever sob story they can conjure and skirt laws and get free shit.

Escapism isn’t a valid excuse, we are all expected to participate in the legal system. We should not be giving passes to people who disproportionately contribute to crime, blood born diseases, and overburdening public systems made for people who CONTRIBUTE to society.

Only if there’s enough halfway homes too—who can afford housing in Vermont straight out of prison?

Honestly this might be a great thing IF resources are put into ensuring folks have a substantial education around digs and have easy access to mental health resources. From what I’ve learned studying trauma is most folks addicted to substances are highly traumatized people, looking to numb the pain. Of corse there’s the issues with medications making you dependent and the dangers of just trying stuff for fun, but when you see the connection between trauma and drug use it becomes clear the deeper issue is not the drugs, these people are really, really hurting. If we eventually decriminalized drugs the stigma might lesson and people would be more apt to seek help, as culturally we shake people with addiction.

I think if this just passes without a large amount of support and education surrounding mental health and drug use then it probably wouldn’t be that great. But I really do feel if we opened our minds and hearts more positive change could be made, there’s just a lot of fear, shame and stigma to wade through, along with potentially dangerous behaviors depending upon the drug.

Also true

Username checks out.

Heck yeah. I love growing mushrooms.

It means plenty. It means state and local police/courts will treat possession much differently. If you get caught by the FBI, you're still screwed, but that is not the case for 99% of people.

Probably because you'll think you're a glass of orange juice and jump out the window /s

Idk. VT has a lot of veterans and that community has been the most vocal on psychedelic research and its positive impact to ptsd. I mean our government wouldnt turn their backs on our veterans right? Right?

Unfortunately that isn't what's being proposed. Actually wild to me that anyone thinks there is any possible way to stop overdose deaths short of this at this point. I spent the better part of the last 10 years working with syringe exchange program and narcan distribution starting back when it was cutting edge pilot programs. I thought widespread naloxone distribution would make a huge dent in the overdose problem but it has literally just gotten worse. It's fucked. The drug supply is just so deadly at this point. Heroin hasn't even existed in 5 years basically. Now if you give everyone using heroin clean dope it's not going to stop overdose deaths but I think it should make a real dent. To me saving lives in the most important part but there are much stronger arguments to be made on saving money and reducing crime. Shit. Free heroin for everyone who wants it? That would cost nothing and just stop 50% + of crime overnight. Just feels like such a absolute no brainer to me at this point that's it's crazy that it still seems like a radical idea to people. There really isn't any difference between giving someone heroin and giving them methadone. Never has been except stigma and people's desire to have a shame based and punitive response to maladaptive behaviors.

Decriminalizing drugs would be political suicide for Phil Scott…he’s gonna build a new prison instead…just wait..glad I got out of vermont..

I agree with what you have written here but just want to clarify that the only physically dangerous drugs to quit cold turkey are alcohol and benzos such as xanax, ativan etc.

There are treatments/protocols for quitting every drug that exists but those are the only ones where you have to be in an inpatient clinic because of risk to your physical health.

There are legal options for quitting opioids that include methadone and Suboxone and they are highly effective for many people. Countless people I know, including myself, credit these drugs to saving our lives. Thankfully access has become much easier for Suboxone post COVID and it shouldn't be too hard access. To me drugs should be legal because it's a safety issue. Plenty of people have no desire to quit and that's fine. Giving them heroin for free is a cost effective way to give people dignity as well as save society a lot of money and unnecessary tragedy. People will still overdose and die but hopefully not in the numbers we are currently seeing. Even if it didn't help the overdose problem though there are still many strong arguments to be made in favor of legalization imo.

Good question.
I have been to a few dozen Grateful Dead Shows.
I have seen my share of bad trips. It was almost one per show in the 80’s and 90’s.
I also went to college at one of our state schools. I would never admit that it was a party college. I saw one or two people get pretty messed up from acid. One guy was having mental health issues and took acid often. It triggered his other issues in a bad way. He left school. Rumors said he was no Longer able to function for years.

Based

That’s something I really hope to try one day, but I’m hesitant to do it without guidance.

Oddly, I’m hesitant to do it with

[deleted]

Honestly same, but wouldn't recommend doing them solo.

Another supporter, Dave Silberman, the high bailiff of Addison County, told Marijuana Moment that while the proposal faces “serious” obstacles to becoming law this session, support in the state for ending the criminal drug war nevertheless continues to grow.

The HIGH bailiff supports this. Made me giggle.

British Columbia decriminalized all drugs recently. I think it's too early to see if it makes any difference. Their theory is that if someone is Od'ing and everyone has a small amount of drugs people won't call for help because they're afraid they will go to jail. This allows users to to call for help without thinking they are going to get in trouble. I'm pretty sure the cops won't even take their drugs there.

Next up we need to have free drug testing for users so they know what they are taking is what they think they are taking. Most deaths are from bad drugs.

So, should we make alcohol illegal again. It is DEFINITELY a hard drug. One of the two that the withdrawals will kill you. This is an all or nothing thing, because I can argue with you about what is or isn't a hard drug.

Education, mental health and making a person a part of the community are not easy. Give your unhoused neighbors a reason to care.

Escapism may not be a valid excuse, but escapism will be there either way. We are humans and we seek to escape. It's not like drugs are a new concept, hard or soft.

There are other factors at play than just the legalization, here and there. We have to change society. People will use it regardless. Why make them a criminal starting down the path where there is no return.

I need this so bad but how will getting it work when my PCP is at Dartmouth Health in NH where they don't have this?

They need to eat some shrooms and maybe go outside once in awhile.

Primary Care Provider

This is a bad take.

As a combat veteran I can tell you psilocybin helped me tremendously.

Who does? Vermonters? We literally live outside lol it’s our entire thing

The old Canada playbook. Keep then just fucked up enough to not care.

Before you hoist yourself up on your own petard, I've probably used psycheldelics more than you and have almost certainly seen more adverse reactions to them then you have. This opinion does not come from a place of hate or ignorance, and this isn't something to take lightly. Strong psychedelics can help rebuild, but they can also destroy.

Let's not act like they're even remotely the same. Comments like this are ignorant.

Geez I've been singing that mantra for 25 years! Emphasize health minimize criminality. Cell scheduled drugs in shops similar to medicinal cannabis. Impose once a week therapy session for every order

Make Vermont whole. Make red opium a legal substitute for heroin, smoke it. Make cocoa leaf and alternative to cocaine, chew it. Make injection sites safe and manageable.

Cut the black market out as much as possible. You could even pair it with physician assisted suicide for those so depressed they can't go on.

Make little Vermont the forward-looking state that others can emulate.

That's already happened. When was the last time you went furniture shopping?

Haha..touché..I ain’t buying that crap..

Government regulating and distributing heroin? Are you on heroin?

Explain yourself. How is it ignorant? You should look into how successful prohibition has been historically.

Weed is literally a psychedelic in high doses.

https://www.psypost.org/2021/08/study-suggests-cannabis-can-induce-a-psychedelic-oceanic-experience-61656

Not to mention, legalizing substances will allow them to be regulated and studied for therapeutic effects. Right now, a large amount of overdoses in VT are attributed to fentanyl laced drugs.

https://www.vermontpublic.org/vpr-news/2022-04-12/vermont-health-officials-confront-record-number-of-opioid-overdose-deaths

criminal charges aren’t working so great, are they? Prison in the US isn’t meant to rehabilitate . Once you’re in the system you’re finished. You can’t really get work, people will judge you…all because you are addicted to a taboo substance because you were never given help… even though people are walking around with severe caffeine and social media addictions and no one says a word to them about it. People who want or depend on drugs are going to get them no matter what. Might as well make sure it’s clean and provide people with addiction resources and mental health help funded through taxing the drugs. Seems pretty simple to me.

No I’m on that shit called reality where I keep seeing people I grew up with destroyed by addiction. The drug war failed, and our neurological understanding of addiction has increased. We are not ever going to just arrest this problem away.

So how is the government distributing heroin going to help addicts?

Under cut the legal market, get them a clean supply this will lower the overdose rate. This will lower crime rates by removing funding for organized crime.

Then you have patients using medication that can then be helped to ween off or manage their addiction. Then they are no longer criminals and get the economic and mental health support to rejoin society.

This has been tried with success in places like Vancouver CA, or in Portugal. The basic idea is treating people like they are sick and need help, instead of just criminal addicts, gets better results.

It seems obvious that nothing attempted in VT or America in my lifetime has worked, at all, even a little. Time to rethink the whole situation.

I’m the ignorant one? Lol

No, you’re right. To the folks who stalemated legal cannabis this is actually way worse and they will work twice as hard to stalemate twice as long.

They're high.

I saw what this did to Oregon, and I gotta say I’m not very excited. The psychedelics specifically shouldn’t be illegal, in my opinion, but its not like they are hard to get anyway. I dunno, man.

Then look no further than New Hampshire. It’s all the Idaho you want with New England tax rates! They even like to crap on your first amendment rights and ban books. Good luck. Please don’t come to Vermont and leave Washington as soon as possible because my friends who love it there don’t want you there.

I’ve been saying this for over 30 years. No one listens to logic, my friend.

Hopefully.

That's because Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, the sponsor of the senate bill, is based as hell. If we elected more people like her, I think you'd be very happy with Montpelier.

She's not one of the folks trying to kill education in the NEK is she?

I love when people tell you you’re ignorant without explaining how, or providing any good counterpoints for discussion or debate. Like yeah immediately putting someone on the defensive by making assumptions about them is definitely going to change their minds /s. Haha

follow the money....

Some funny tripping moments from many, many moons ago:

1. Guy was in an Adirondack chair on a porch in the summer claimed he was "a stick of butter".
2. Guy told me he was "riding the magic dragonfly". Henceforth 'riding the magic dragonfly' became our code for tripping.
3. Buddy and I were tripping in a dorm and as my buddy reached to open the community room door a guy on the other side opened it. My buddy claimed he "had the force". Absolutely hysterical watching him try to move stuff with his mind for like four hours.

Damn, college was fun!

Wah wah wah. There are no safe havens in this country.

people like you are destroy ing this country every day, we can fight back and demand what is right

Yeah NH i guess if anyone knows of jobs up there lol

Stay in Washington, ❄️. We don’t want you.

nice try i refuse to live under authoritatian leadership

😂😂😂😂

There are jobs everywhere right now. Especially in rural America

Money makes everything messy.

Or the ones that the Democrats propose to legalize cannabis every time they don't have a majority.

awesome looking forward to just get out of the cities, no im not bringing my city politics with me because i feel its important to own land and detach from the system

If you think powerful psychedelics are and apples to apples comparison with cannabis, then I would doubt you have ever tried either.

Wee is not a psychedelic. The amount of THC you would have to consume to get the same effect as 2 grams of mushrooms is impossible and even then, the experience would be more akin to a bad trip.

People make their own decision. Very rarely are their cases of forced addiction and I don't know what angle you are playing at in terms of legalization b, but it will be a cold day in hell before I sat idly by while people tried to legalize things like heroin and coke because they're too lazy or scared to help the people who need it a do what needs to be done to help them. I agree you can treat opioid and alcohol addiction with a combination of psychedelics and therapy, but that should be a last case scenario and in heroin and alcohols my opinion in the best offence is a good defense and to stir people away from it at all cost staring at a young age. Thats the messages that should be in our classrooms. Not the ones we have now because they aren't working.

Psychedelics and opioids should never be legal on a recreational level. EVER.

Cannabis and powerful psychedelic are not the same and from what I've seen from this sub I would have never sold them to in good conscience, you because you wouldn't have been able to handle it.

lol what are you going on about

I have tried both, I never made an apples to apples comparison. Im actually getting really sick of people on Reddit assuming shit about each other so quickly and then being condescending because of an assumption. Everyone has their own lives and opinions, but that’s a different discussion and I wanted to hear why you thought the way you did.

In fact, it was an experience with an edible I made with far too much weed that put me into Diabetic Ketoacidosis and a coma. Not the weed itself, but I was so out of it and not taking care of myself, and I downed a 2 liter of regular soda I thought was diet.

I don’t really have an angle other than I come from a father who was alchoholic and I myself am recovering. I also work for people with addictions, not all of them but some, and my organization has had several overdoses, luckily it’s been several years. I’ve seen the heroine problem here first hand in both my work and when I was displaced from the housing problem and was living in a motel during Covid. 13 OD deaths in the 6 months we lived there.

There’s no easy solution here honestly. But one thing is for sure, resources need funding badly and there needs to be better mental health care. luckily my wages are paid by Medicaid so I can keep helping. There’s also a psychologist and psychiatrist shortage that I don’t see being talked about as often as housing, obviously housing is more immediately important…but in the long term it’s having a devastating effect that I also see first hand in my work.

Canada is in the process of legalizing many drugs, and in BC they have clinics that give out drugs in a safe space….we will be able to see how that turns out for them, and we can back up our opinions with more data after we see what the long term results will be up there.

Phil Scott absolutely hates the idea of supervised injection sites. Vermonters get what they vote for.

Hell no.

Maybe if people stopped voting for Phil Scott we’d have safe injection sites in VT.

Yes Scott is clearly more comfortable with hundreds of Vermonters od’ing than trying something different. It is disappointing.

I know very little, if nothing about the subject, so please forgive my ignorance. Your comment regarding methadone being the same as heroin has me wondering . Does methadone eliminate the chance of OD?

Also methadone is used to eventually get people drug free correct? If so, why do we need to make heroin legal? If methadone is already a legal substance, why not hand out methadone to people on a regular basis, without restriction?

I think there is, or perhaps was, a methadone clinic in Burlington correct? Is that program restrictive? Meaning only a small number of people are allowed to participate at a time? Or perhaps the treatment, has to physically be administered to participants by a professional? There by forcing participants to have to travel daily (by appointment) to the clinic? Is clinic open 24/7? Are emergency “appointments “ available?

Depending on the answers to the questions above, one could quickly see how getting treatment, could become problematic for some. Especially, those who are trying very hard to live their lives as “normally”as possible. I have heard of repeated stories of people being addicted to heroin, and even those closest to them have no idea. These people lead professional lives, and no one would ever guess that they are suffering from addiction.

If most of the above is true, then sadly it would be logical for people seek out heroin on the street, rather than methadone from a clinic, as it may be, just easier to get.

Unfortunately people can still have a fatal overdose on methadone though it is a lot less common to happen accidentally vs fentanyl overdosing.

I can't speak to the clinic in Burlington but clinics are usually highly restrictive especially in the beginning of treatment. You have to show up at a certain time to receive your dose everyday. If you miss it you can start to be in withdrawal. Thankfully another drug available is called Suboxone and that is something that people take on their own from home. It isn't always as effective as methadone but it's the same idea of maintenance therapy. The goal with maintenance therapy is not always to get the person drug free as in off the medication. If it is effective for them many will take it for years and decades. The unfortunate problem is these drugs don't work for everyone. If you were to just provide the pure version of the drug they already use it would have similar outcomes except a much broader benefit to society at large.