What is your vision for creating an industry that centers around community and service?

How can psychedelics address community needs? The first answer to this question is that we need to ask the communities that can most benefit from psychedelics what their needs and priorities are! It’s obvious that in most American cities and communities, we have a mental health and addiction crisis that is fueled by institutions that (intentionally or unintentionally) manufacture separation and create systemic trauma. Everyone is impacted by it, some take advantage, and many perceive themselves as victims or are direct victims of it.

So, in addition to knowing what our communities want and creating platforms for our communities to drive how the business of psychedelics unfolds locally and nationally, the vision is that businesses are of service to heal our communities and not profiteer off the pain of others. The potential exists for many different business models like manufacturing cooperatives, non-commercial healing centers, licensed cultivation facilities, licensed clinics or service centers, and likely many others I’m not considering, including all the ancillary businesses. If we can harness all of this capital and potential and drive it toward individual and social healing then the outcome will be beneficial beyond our wildest imagination.

How can we design standards so that entry into the industry gives priority to the principles of equity and inclusion at all levels?

By decriminalizing first, opening up community-based access for local ceremony, opening up therapeutic access so licensed medical providers can offer services, and limiting the number of licenses any single entity can own. This can all be written into bills and ordinances and made into law. Eventually, psilocybin will be covered by insurance but that won’t happen, I believe, until psilocybin is moved from Schedule I to Schedule IV or completely removed from the list of controlled substances.