September 22, 2026
This morning, the Oregon Health Authority made it official: the proposed psilocybin rule-making that would have sharply increased licensing fees is dead. OHA will not be moving forward with the rules identified in its August 28, 2026 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, which means the fee increases at the heart of that package will not take effect.
If you have followed this fight, you know what this means. Oregon’s psilocybin services program, the first of its kind in the world, was facing a regulatory cost structure that threatened to price out the very facilitators and service centers who make it work. OHA’s own budget scenarios showed the program running a significant cash balance deficit for the 2025-27 biennium, and the proposed answer was to close that gap on the backs of licensees through higher fees. Licensees warned, in comment after comment and hour after hour of hearing testimony, that fee increases would accelerate license attrition – shrinking the program’s own revenue base while shrinking access for clients at the same time. It was a spiral, and the community said so, loudly.
OHA listened.
Congratulations, and Thank You
First: congratulations. To everyone who submitted written comments during the public comment period. To everyone who showed up and delivered testimony at the public rulemaking hearings – including the September 15 and 16 sessions where so many of you spoke with clarity, data, and heart. To the members of the Oregon Psilocybin Advisory Board and the rule advisory committees who carried these concerns into the agency’s internal deliberations. And to the partner organizations who coordinated comment campaigns, tracked the budget documents, and made sure nobody fought this alone.
This result did not happen by accident, and it did not happen from the top down. It happened because ordinary people – facilitators, clients, service center operators, researchers, and advocates – took time out of their lives to put their names on the record. OHA’s own announcement acknowledged it directly, thanking participants “for your dedication to safe, effective, and equitable psilocybin services in Oregon.” That dedication is you. That dedication won.
We also want to thank OHA for engaging in good faith. Rulemaking works when agencies treat public comment as more than a checkbox, and this decision shows the process functioning the way it should: feedback received, considered, and reflected in the outcome.
What Happens Next
A few practical notes from OHA’s announcement:
1. The current rule-making is withdrawn. Any pending requests to postpone proceedings under ORS 183.335(4) are moot and will not receive responses.
2. Budget transparency is coming. In response to questions raised during the comment period, OHA will post documents on the psilocybin program website addressing the budget questions the community raised.
3. A new rule-making is on the horizon, but without fee changes. OHA expects to open a separate rulemaking process on non-fee matters, with a public comment period anticipated in December and a planned effective date of January 15, 2027. Watch the program’s Administrative Rules page for details.
We will be watching that December comment period closely and will flag anything that matters for the community.
This Is Just the Beginning
Here is the honest truth: stopping a bad fee increase is a defensive win. It protects the program we have today. It does not build the program we need tomorrow.
The structural challenges OHA’s budget scenarios exposed have not gone away. The program still needs a stable, sustainable funding model – one that does not lurch from fee-hike proposal to fee-hike proposal every biennium. And access remains the defining challenge: psilocybin services are still out of reach for too many Oregonians, especially in rural and underserved communities, largely because the current standalone service center model is expensive to build and hard to sustain.
That is why attention now turns to the Oregon Legislature. The 2027 session presents a real opportunity to strengthen the program with statutory solutions – including ideas like provider-based psilocybin therapy, which would let licensed behavioral health professionals offer psilocybin services within existing clinical settings, dramatically lowering the cost of entry and expanding access statewide. It also means making the economic case for the program: the savings it can generate in mental health care, the revenue and jobs it creates, and the value of Oregon remaining the national leader at a moment when other states are watching closely.
We cannot do that without you. The same coalition that filled the hearing record this month – the same letters, the same testimony, the same calls – will need to show up in Salem in 2027. Lawmakers respond to constituents, and this community has proven it can turn out.
More to come. Stay tuned.
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