The Oregon Health Authority has walked back a proposal to raise fees on the psilocybin therapy industry.
Oregon voters approved a measure allowing psilocybin therapy in 2020. Since the program launched in 2023, more than 20,000 people have used the service.
Regulation of the program is funded through its own fees.
To help meet costs, the OHA announced in June that it was considering new rules for next year. But the details drew pushback from some industry leaders and advocates.
Under the proposal, annual licensing fees for manufacturers and therapy centers would have doubled to $20,000, while session facilitators would have had to pay $2,000 more each year.
New laboratories would have seen their annual licensing fees double to $20,000 starting in 2029, and the state would have no longer allowed some providers to qualify for reduced fees.
Heidi Pendergast, the Oregon Director of Healing Advocacy, said the changes would have devastated an industry that already deals with some of the most expensive healthcare regulations in the state.
“There was some really great work from the community doing surveys about whether people would renew, given the doubling of fees,” said Pendergast. “What we saw was a lot of people would not, and that would potentially bring in less money to the OHA than the current fee level.”
Pendergast argued this could also have made the therapy more expensive and less accessible to lower-income Oregonians. Previous state data showed that clients were already disproportionately wealthy.
On Tuesday, the OHA announced it would not move forward with the proposed fee changes. It cited feedback from the public comment process, the Oregon Psilocybin Advisory Board, and its rule advisory committees.
Instead, the agency said it would begin a new rule-making process focused on other policies unrelated to the fee structure.
Pendergast said the next step for psilocybin advocates is to get more financial transparency about where these fees are going.
Sam Chapman, the Executive Director of the Center for Psychedelic Policy, said the industry needs to work with the legislature to help make the program financially sustainable.
Chapman argued some of the current regulations were put in place in anticipation that psilocybin therapy would be less safe than it actually is.
He said it’s time to reconsider what’s actually necessary, which could reduce the cost to the state.
“This has always really been a labor of love,” said Chapman. “I think we're starting to see more opportunities to help add to that labor of love by including more financially responsible regulations that can allow people to really make a living wage doing this really incredible work.”
