Vermont Stripped Psilocybin Legalization and Still Has No Therapy Program

Vermont lawmakers cut psilocybin legalization from Senate bill S.114 in March 2024 so a study group could weigh psychedelic therapy. Chair Ginny Lyons said open use might interfere with that work.

Governor Phil Scott signed the stripped bill as Act 126 on May 29, 2024. The working group later declined a state therapy program, a 2025 House decrim bill never became law, and the mushrooms remain illegal.

What S.114 Lost in the Health Committee

S.114 arrived as a two-part idea: legalize psilocybin and stand up a work group on psychedelic-assisted care. Sen. Martine Gulick led the sponsors. Lyons, who chairs Senate Health and Welfare, signed on too, along with seven other senators.

The committee’s job, as Lyons framed it, was the value of therapeutic use. Decriminalization, she said, might collide with that goal.

It could be that decriminalization is going to get in the way of therapeutic use.

Sen. Ginny Lyons, chair, Senate Health and Welfare Committee

Members talked about packing the group with medical voices from the University of Vermont and Johns Hopkins, plus the Office of Professional Regulation and advocacy groups. The legalization language came out. What left the room was a study bill.

That choice sounded careful. It also locked in a sequence the rest of the fight never broke: research first, access later, with later never arriving on the governor’s desk.

Vermont Doctors Flagged Youth Use and Driving

Charles MacLean, professor of medicine and associate dean for primary care at UVM’s Larner College of Medicine, brought the committee the closest thing it had to a local doctor poll. His slides, filed as testimony on 770 Vermont clinicians, walked through a July 2023 survey of primary care doctors, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and naturopaths.

One hundred thirty-three answered, a 17 percent response. Guarded hope sat next to sharp social fears, which is the mix a health committee can turn into a delay.

VERMONT PRIMARY CARE VIEWS ON PSYCHEDELICS

The fears that filled the room were about kids and cars, not about the compounds wrecking the body. Doctors still wanted classes and more trials, which is the path a study group can promise without moving a single patient.

MacLean’s team had already interviewed 16 people across primary care, psychiatry, palliative care, nursing, law enforcement, the State House, and advocacy. One of them put the mental-health bind in plain words: “We need to do something different. We need to treat [this] crisis in a way that is not the norm because whatever we’re doing isn’t working.” Another drew the equity line the legalization clause would have tested: “I think we shouldn’t legalize this until we can offer it to people who can’t pay for it.”

A 2025 primary care survey paper later put those same fieldwork questions into the journal record. The political work was already done. The committee had heard the caution it needed to drop adult use and keep the lab coat in charge.

Katherine MacLean Said People Cannot Ask for Help

Katherine MacLean, a former Johns Hopkins researcher, testified the same February 29, 2024, hearing. She is not Charles MacLean. She told the committee psilocybin had been life-saving in her own case, and that keeping it criminal stops people from seeking help without legal fear.

That is the cost the study path never priced. A working group can read papers. It cannot sit with someone who will not walk into a clinic because the mushroom is still a charging decision.

Rick Barnett of the Psychedelic Society of Vermont and Kurt White of the Brattleboro Retreat also testified, on the Senate side and again when the House Human Services Committee took the bill in May. The witness table had clinicians, an advocate, and a person describing criminalization as a barrier to care. The product the Senate sent on still treated legalization as the risk.

MacLean’s slides noted the federal wall behind all of this. Psilocybin has sat in Schedule I since 1971, which chokes research even as states try to build therapy programs around it. Vermont’s answer was to study that bind rather than punch a state-law hole in it.

A Study Group Became the Whole Law

Once legalization was gone, S.114 had one job: create the Psychedelic Therapy Advisory Working Group to examine psychedelics for physical and mental health and to report findings. The Joint Fiscal Office logged no dollar cost. Scott signed it on May 29, 2024.

The enacted working group statute is Act 126. It does not legalize possession, cultivation, or sale. It does not license facilitators. It does not set a patient pathway. The title of the act is the policy: an advisory working group.

THE BILL’S PATH FROM LEGALIZATION TO A STUDY GROUP

1. February 14, 2024: Senate Health and Welfare holds the first walk-through of S.114 with Gulick and legislative counsel.
2. February 29, 2024: Charles MacLean, Katherine MacLean, and Kurt White testify.
3. March 12, 2024: The committee marks up the bill with counsel and Barnett.
4. March 15, 2024: The committee votes the stripped working-group measure.
5. May 1 to May 10, 2024: House Human Services and Appropriations hear witnesses, amend, and send the bill back; the Senate takes the House changes.
6. May 29, 2024: Scott signs Act 126. Psilocybin stays illegal.

Same week, Scott vetoed a separate safe-consumption-site bill. The psychedelic measure that survived was the one that created a committee, not a service.

November’s Report Closed the Therapy Door

The group issued its final report in November 2024. It did not clear a therapy system. It said Vermont was not ready to legalize psychedelic therapies and declined to back a state program of that kind. The top-line advice pointed to harm-reduction training for health workers around use that would remain outside a legalized system.

So the theory that killed legalization in March, that a study group would protect therapeutic use, produced a document that also declined therapeutic use. Patients who had been told to wait for the science-shaped program were told, again, to wait.

WHAT THE NOVEMBER 2024 REPORT DID

• State therapy program: The group declined to support creating one.
• Legalization: It judged Vermont not ready to legalize psychedelic therapies.
• Harm reduction: It pointed to more training for health workers for use outside a legal system.
• Clock: Senators later filed S.106 to stretch the group’s charge through January 1, 2026, and to add members; whether that bill became law is a separate count, and that date has already passed.

The study-first path did not yield a clinic. It yielded another stall, a second roadblock inside a year if you count the March strip and the November refusal as two stops on the same road. Anyone who needed the medicine in 2024 still needed a black market, a church, or a plane ticket in 2025.

House Bill 452 Never Left Committee

On February 28, 2025, the House introduced H.452, an act relating to decriminalization of psilocybin-containing mushrooms and the establishment of the Psilocybin Therapeutic Consultation Program. It would have taken possession, cultivation, and noncommercial personal use off the criminal board for adults 21 and built a consultation program around that change.

That is the pairing S.114 dropped: some form of adult relief plus a professional wrapper. The legislature’s bill record shows a first reading and a committee referral. H.452 did not become law. No later act on that docket legalized the mushrooms or opened a state therapy service.

Federal work kept moving on a different clock. On September 14, 2026, the Food and Drug Administration held a federal hearing on psychedelic medicines, still treating therapeutic use as an open scientific and regulatory question. Vermont’s local experiment in putting therapy ahead of legalization had already run, and it had not produced a therapy.

Katherine MacLean told the committee that criminalization keeps people from asking for help. Act 126 studied that problem. The report declined to lift it. H.452 tried to lift it and never reached the floor. Possession of psilocybin-containing mushrooms is still a crime in Vermont.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did Vermont’s Psychedelic Working Group Law Cost State Money?

The Joint Fiscal Office recorded no fiscal impact for S.114 as enacted, so Act 126 did not come with a budget line for clinics, licenses, or staffed treatment sites. The working group was cheap because it was a study charge, not a care system, which is why a no-cost bill could move in weeks while an access bill could not.

When Did Vermont Doctors Answer the Psychedelics Survey?

MacLean’s team fielded the primary care survey in July 2023, months before S.114’s first committee walk-through, and the journal version of the work carries a March 5, 2025, publication date. Lawmakers were looking at last summer’s attitudes, not at a poll taken after the working group had finished.

How Many Stakeholders Did UVM Researchers Interview?

They completed 16 semi-structured interviews across primary care, psychiatry, palliative care, psychology, nursing, legislators, law enforcement, advocates, and investors, then used those themes to write the doctor survey. The small interview set is the source of the equity and “do something different” lines the committee heard, not a random sample of the state.

What Kinds of Clinics Did Surveyed Doctors Work In?

Among those who answered, 27 percent were in private practice, 26 percent in hospital-owned groups, 25 percent in federally qualified health centers, and 20 percent in academic settings, with a median age of 47 and 70 percent of respondents female. Two-thirds worked in family medicine, so the caution the committee treated as “Vermont doctors” was heavily primary care, not a psychedelic specialty shop.

What Is Psilocybin’s Federal Schedule Status?

Psilocybin has been in federal Schedule I since 1971, the same listing MacLean’s testimony used to explain why U.S. trials stay slow and why a state working group cannot by itself create a pharmacy product. Schedule I is also why a Vermont consultation program, had H.452 passed, would still have sat under a federal ban on the substance it wanted to wrap in professional care.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of Vermont legislation and related research. It is for information only and is not medical advice, legal advice, or a recommendation to possess, grow, or use psilocybin or any other controlled substance. Readers who are weighing treatment or who face a criminal or licensing question should talk with a licensed clinician and with a Vermont attorney before acting. Bill statuses, survey figures, and program rules reflect the public records and papers cited here and can change if the legislature or federal agencies act again.