East Lansing’s city council has voted down a proposal that would have told police to not to focus on penalizing people who use certain psychedelic drugs.
A majority of the council rejected the resolution this week. It would have instructed city officials to treat the use, possession growth, purchase and distribution of entheogenic plants as the “lowest law enforcement priority.”
That includes peyote, ayahuasca and plants commonly known as magic mushrooms.
Those plants have religious and spiritual significance in many cultures, and Council Member Lisa Babcock said she sympathizes with advocates who told the Council the substances could be used for therapeutic purposes.
But the resolution would not have made those psychoactive substances legal in East Lansing. As Babcock noted, they remain illegal at the state and federal level, and she worried the resolution would create confusion.
"I think that [at] a level well beyond my knowledge, the science will catch up with what you're saying," she said. "I can't vote for this because we can't legalize it for you."
Mayor Ron Bacon echoed those concerns.
"I don’t like doing performative things that leave people in jeopardy," he said. "If we're going to do things performative, or anti-performative, it needs to have teeth and create some type of action."
Mayor Pro Tem Jessy Gregg, however, joined Council Member Dana Watson in voting in favor.
"What we're really doing is sending a message," Gregg said. "We're creating one more link in the chain for our advocates that have spoken so eloquently to us [as they] approach the state about full legalization."
A group called the Michigan Initiative for Community Healing has been gathering signatures before a June 1 deadline in an attempt to bring a proposal to November's ballot. If approved by voters, that measure would reduce statewide criminal penalties associated with hallucinogenic plants.
