The state-level picture on psychedelic policy is more complicated than it looked two years ago. Two recent developments illustrate why.
## Oregon: The Self-Funding Problem
Oregon was first. Measure 109 passed in 2020, and the state's licensed psilocybin service centers began operating in 2023. [As Lucid News reported in February](https://www.lucid.news/oregons-psilocybin-program-industry-insiders-weigh-in-on-closures-and-the-future/), service centers are closing and facilitators are declining to renew licenses — and the reasons are largely structural rather than ideological.
The Oregon program is required by law to fund itself entirely through licensing fees. It cannot draw on state tax revenue. Angela Allbee, Section Manager at Oregon Psilocybin Services, acknowledged the obvious problem: as service centers close and revenue shrinks, the fee structure has to cover rising costs. "A fee-based structure with rising costs is always going to be a formula for having to do some problem-solving," she told Lucid News.
Allbee also noted the program's actual output: more than 15,000 people served, nearly 400 licensed facilitators, and a functioning regulatory infrastructure that didn't exist five years ago. Whether the business model sustains it is currently unresolved.
## Washington State: Two Competing Models
Washington is watching Oregon and drawing different lessons depending on who you ask. [Lucid News covered the legislative deadlock in February](https://www.lucid.news/varying-approaches-to-psychedelic-policy-reform-in-washington-state/): Senate Bill 5921, the Washington Medical Psilocybin Act, treats psilocybin as a pharmaceutical intervention requiring strict Department of Health oversight. Opposed to that model are grassroots organizations like REACH Washington, which back bills treating psilocybin more like a regulated craft product.
SB 5921 stalled in the Ways and Means Committee. Neither model has won. The tension between clinical credibility and equitable access is not unique to Washington — it's the defining fault line in psychedelic policy nationally, and it doesn't have an obvious resolution.
## The Pattern
Oregon built something real but can't sustain it on fees alone. Washington can't agree on what "legal access" should mean. And the federal picture — where MDMA therapy was rejected and psilocybin remains Schedule I — looms over all of it.