Colorado House Approves Senate-Passed Psychedelics Bill To Allow Pardons And Implement Data-Tracking

OG Article

May 5, 2025

Ben Adlin

Colorado House lawmakers have advanced a Senate-passed bill that would empower the governor to grant pardons to people who’ve been convicted of psychedelics-related offenses while also revising implementation rules and data-tracking provisions for the state’s 2022 voter-approved psychedelics legalization law.

Members of House passed SB25-297 on second reading in a voice vote Monday, following Senate passage of the proposal on a 23–12 vote last week. A final vote on third reading, expected soon, will send the legislation to the governor.

“It’s going to help track data related to psilocybin use, outcomes from healing centers [and] hospital admissions from police center data. This is helpful in terms of how we create policy,” Rep. Lisa Feret (D), a sponsor of the bill, told colleagues. “We passed in 2022 the ability to use psilocybin. This will help collect data so we can make better policy decisions.”

If enacted, the would authorize Gov. Jared Polis (D) or future governors to grant clemency to people with convictions for low-level possession of substances such as psilocybin, ibogaine and DMT that have since been legalized for adults.

It would also require the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), Department of Revenue (DOR) and Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA) to “collect information and data related to the use of natural medicine and natural medicine products.”

That would include data on law enforcement activities, adverse health events, consumer protection claims and behavioral impacts related to psychedelics.

“What this bill does is it sets up a mechanism to collect health information, which should give us the data to see whether or not natural medicine, as it’s rolled out, has adverse health effects or beneficial health impacts,” Sen. Matt Ball (D), SB25-297’s Senate sponsor, said during discussion on the measure last week.

One amendment approved in a Senate committee removed a government appropriation to pay for that data collection and tracking. The change replaced “ongoing appropriations” with “appropriations or gifts, grants, or donations,” and Ball said that lawmakers have a letter of intent from the Psychedelic Science Funders Collaborative—a nonprofit that supports advancing psychedelic therapy—to fund the program for the entirety of its five-year duration.

Feret also noted on the House floor Monday that the data-tracking “will be funded by grant dollars, so we will not be taking any more money from this.”

The bill in its current form would earmark $208,240 in gifts, grants and donations to the governor’s office of information technology. “To implement this act, the office may use this appropriation to provide information technology services for the department of public health and environment,” the Senate-amended version says.

The legislation would further amend rules around licensing and ownership of psychedelic healing centers. For example, it removes a requirement for fingerprint background checks for owners and employees of licensed facilities, making it so they would only be subject to a name-based criminal background check.

It additionally “requires the state licensing authority to adopt rules related to product labels for regulated natural medicine and regulated natural medicine products and permits the state licensing authority to adopt rules regarding the types of regulated natural medicine products that can be manufactured.”

The proposal overall has support from an array of advocates, including psychedelic medicine proponents as well as groups more skeptical of legalization. Public commenters at a hearing last month seemed to agree that the bill’s data collection provisions would help observers both inside and outside Colorado better understand the outcomes around regulated psychedelics.

Meanwhile in Colorado, last month the governor signed into law a bill that would allow a form of psilocybin to be prescribed as a medication if the federal government authorizes its use.

While Colorado already legalized psilocybin and several other psychedelics for adults 21 and older through the voter-approved ballot initiative, the newly enacted reform will make it so drugs containing an isolated crystalized version synthesized from psilocybin can become available under physician prescription.

As of January, meanwhile, Colorado regulars have been authorized to approve licenses for psilocybin service centers where adults can access the psychedelic in controlled settings.

The governor signed a bill to create the regulatory framework for legal psychedelics in 2023.

But lawmakers evidently are interested in setting the state up to allow for a more conventional system of distribution for certain psychedelics. In 2022, Polis also signed a bill to align state statute to legalize MDMA prescriptions if and when the federal government ultimately permits such use.

Whether FDA moves forward with any such approvals in uncertain, and the agency faced criticism last year after rejecting an application to allow MDMA-assisted therapy for people with PTSD.

Meanwhile in Colorado, a bill that would have limited THC in marijuana and outlawed a variety of psilocybin products will no longer move forward this session following the lead sponsor’s move to withdraw the bill.