Local Victories and Legal Battles: Michigan’s Psychedelic Advocates Persist
The mitten state has been a quiet but fierce force in pushing for wider access to natural entheogenic plant products. Just last year, the state of Michigan surpassed California in overall regulated cannabis sales making it a leader in the industry.
Grassroots cannabis organizations have led the way for activists who support access to psychedelics. The Michigan Psychedelics Society (MPS), which was founded as a non-profit organization in 2017, has been working diligently over the last few years to bring psychedelics to the people. The goals of MPS are focused on keeping psychedelics, or entheogenic plants, in the hands of the community and to allow freedom of self-expression through the use of these compounds. As of 2024, personal use and possession of entheogenic plants is decriminalized or low priority in Ann Arbor, Detroit, Hazel Park, Ferndale, Ypsilanti, and Washtenaw County, with other cities to follow suit.
The legislation that has been passed defines entheogenic plants as, “the full spectrum of plants, fungi, and natural materials and/or their extracted compounds, limited to those containing the following types of compounds: indoleamines, tryptamines, and phenethylamines.”
While the local decriminalization efforts have been fruitful, it’s been slightly more challenging to pass statewide legislation regarding psychedelics. Julie Barron, founder of MPS has been involved in both the local and statewide efforts.
“As we were doing the city work our goal, of course, was let’s get more cities to decriminalize because ultimately that’s better for our statewide movement, right?” Barron said. “So, we had a really wonderful ally in Senator Jeff Irwin, who is the senator of our local area here, and we helped write two senate bills with specific decrim language that did not include commercial sales. They both got introduced, they both got sent into committee and they both died in a committee and we never heard or saw from them ever again.”
One of those senate bills was SB 631 introduced in 2021 by 15th District Senator Jeff Irwin (D) and then 2nd District Senator Adam Hollier (D). This bill would have amended state law to decriminalize the manufacture, creation, delivery, and possession of an “entheogenic plant or fungus,” including any natural material containing DMT, ibogaine, mescaline, and psilocybin. The legislation was referred to the committee on Judiciary and Public Safety, where it is currently listed in committee. It has not had any movement or updates which suggests that the bill has died in committee.
Despite this stall in legislation, support for expanded access to psychedelics by lawmakers is apparent. In 2023, Resolution No. 5. was passed by both the Michigan House and Senate. The measure urges Congress, the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration to invest in “non-technology treatment options for servicemembers and veterans who have psychological trauma as a result of military service.” The resolution also describes the use of psychedelics in clinical settings for treatment of psychological trauma of servicemembers and their family members.
With vocal support for psychedelic-assisted therapy across the state, advocates were feeling hopeful. In 2024 a bill was introduced in the House (HB 5980) by 14th District Rep. Mike McFall (D) that would legalize possession of up to two ounces of “a substance that contains psilocybin or psilocin” for “personal use” provided a person is 18 or older and has a medical record “that demonstrates the individual has a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder.” In October, 2024 this legislation was referred to the Committee on Criminal Justice but was not taken up by the committee. The legislation was in the balance.
Grassroots Organizations Step Forward
With no visible momentum in the state legislature for HB 5980, grassroots organizations decided to take matters into their own hands. In 2021, MPS, Decriminalize Nature Michigan and Students for Sensible Drug Policy began to work on an initiative slated for the ballot in November 2024. Titled “Michigan Decriminalization of Psilocybin Mushrooms and Other Plants and Fungi Initiative,” this legislation would have decriminalized the cultivation, possession, and use of psilocybin, ibogaine, mescaline, peyote, and dimethyltryptamine (DMT), which together would be called natural plants and mushrooms.
In the state of Michigan, citizen-initiated statutes that receive enough valid signatures are sent to the legislature, which then has 40 days to pass the initiative into law. The governor cannot veto indirect initiatives that legislators approve. If the legislature does not approve the initiative, then it appears on the next general election ballot. In 2024, the initiative would have needed 356,958 valid signatures, equal to 8% of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election.
“We formed a ballot committee that was called Michigan Initiative for Community Healing, MICH for short. We had some money committed to us and we really got rolling,” Barron explained. Unfortunately, funding fell through and brought the effort to a halt.
Barron recalled the hard work put into the initiative, “To actually get the numbers that are required within our state you actually have to spend probably about a million dollars minimum to pay people,” she said. “But we were proud of ourselves because we got approximately 80,000 signatures. That wasn’t near where we needed to be, but being grassroots and it being our first attempt, we were proud of ourselves.”
Michiganders Embrace Entheogenic Churches
Alongside hyperlocal legislative activism to increase access to psychedelics, the entheogenic church scene has flourished across Michigan – with Detroit emerging as a sort-of midwest capital for psychedelic religious groups such as the Per-Ankh and churches spun off from the Sugarleaf Rastafarian Church of Cannabis Love.
The Sugarleaf Churches were marketed to people by founder Heidi Grossman who claimed that the churches had religious protections from prosecution under current drug laws. A number of cannabis farms connected to these churches were raided by law enforcement. Grossman went on to found Detroit’s Psychedelic Healing Shack which became another religious freedom battleground.
Last September, the Psychedelic Healing Shack was raided at gunpoint by Detroit police who seized a sizable stash of cannabis and psilocybin mushrooms after threats from city officials to shut the shack down. In response, founder and owner Robert Pizzimenti – known locally as Dr. Bob – who had formally joined a Sugarleaf Church, teamed up with Grossman to declare the Healing Shack an official branch of the church.
Not long thereafter, Grossman filed a $4.2 Million Dollar defamation lawsuit against Detroit Corporation Counsel Conrad Mallett Jr. Grossman accused Mallett of making “malicious statements [that] were false and defamatory” in his comments in a December 2024 Detroit Metro Times article examining the legitimacy of Pizzimenti and Grossman’s claims of religious freedom.
In the saga’s latest twist, Pizzimenti recently announced that the Psychedelic Healing Shack’s current location is up for sale. He told the Detroit Metro Times last month that the decision comes not because he wants to sell the building, but due to “relentless harassment” from city officials.
Turning to Community For Support
Michigan psychedelic culture is deeply connected to music and freedom of expression. Back in 2000, the Detroit Electronic Music Festival became the first civic-sanctioned music festival in the country. Now called Movement Festival, the event celebrated its 25th year over Memorial Day weekend and brought over an estimated 90,000 people to Hart Plaza in Detroit.
Marielle Thorp of Williamston, MI reminisced about this year’s festival, saying the “Movement Festival is more than music. It’s community, art, and radical self-expression… It’s where people can come together to move, connect.”
The western side of Michigan is also no stranger to psychedelic culture. The Electric Forest Music Festival, formerly Rothbury Music Festival, is in its 13th year and set to take place in Rothbury, MI this June. Known for its psychedelic performance artists like Liquid Stranger, installations throughout the forest and overall judgement-free zone, it hosted an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 attendees in 2024.
Ann Arbor, MI – the first city to decriminalize entheogenic plants through the work of MPS and Decrim Nature Ann Arbor – previously hosted an “Entheofest” where folks could gather with like-minded individuals to learn about entheogenic plants and fungi. This year’s event, “Entheo Cup,” organized by MPS, Detroit Psychedelic Society, Kilindi Iyi Community Lab, and Oakland Hyphae, hosts several activities where people can submit samples for judging and participate in the largest mushroom contest. The event also offers substance testing, bringing a harm reduction approach to psychedelics. The event will take place on August 23rd at the Per Ankh Church in Detroit.
Psychedelic Research In Michigan
With the increasing popularity of music festivals, responsible psychedelic use and the possible medical use of entheogenic plants, universities throughout Michigan are joining the movement. Most notably, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor opened the Michigan Psychedelic Research Center (M-PsyC) in 2022. Since its opening, the group has published more than 30 research articles, reviews and commentaries related to their multidisciplinary work with psychedelics. This year, M-PsyC was home to the Global Psychedelic Survey which is the largest comprehensive assessment of global psychedelic use among adults 21 years of age and older. This year’s survey ran from May 1st through 23rd and was available in 18 languages.
In addition to scientific studies into psychedelics in Ann Arbor, Central Michigan University has also contributed to the growing body of work surrounding mechanisms and potential utility of psychedelics. Some of this research is from Dr. Christopher Davoli’s laboratory which focuses on perceptions related to psychedelics. Other investigations, led by Dr. Shasta Sabo, study mechanisms related to ketamine and its metabolites on neuronal plasticity.
Given the wide interest in psychedelics throughout the state of Michigan, recreational, ceremonial and medical, it’s surprising that state-level legislation has not yet moved forward. Grassroots organizations – like the MPS, Decriminalize Nature, and others continue to organize locally, hopefully harnessing enough support to shift the statewide momentum.
“Michigan is a diverse landscape of ideologies,” said Decriminalize Nature Co-Founder and mitten state native Dr. Larry Norris, in a statement provided exclusively to Lucid News. Norris added that, “many of the cities that passed [psychedelic decrim initiatives] in Michigan are part of the progressive nexus including Detroit, Ann Arbor, and other metro Detroit areas.”
“Ann Arbor was one of the first locations to decriminalize cannabis in the 70s,” Norris’ statement concluded, “so the local acceptance of decriminalization is present and there are many more grassroots activists in Michigan moving the needle in the local ground game which is part of the make up and essence of the Michigander mindset.”
Michigan Psychedelic Society is hosting an official meet up at Psychedelic Science 2025 in Denver, CO. Join the meet up June 19th at 2:30 pm MT in Room 501 (Molly). You can get 15% off the ticket by using the following code to buy a ticket: MPS15.