For the first time in more than 50 years, psilocybin mushrooms are being grown legally for use outside a research setting in the United States. Oregon’s health authority has issued its first manufacturer license to a psilocybin farm, clearing the way for legal guided sessions at service centers expected to open within months.
At a glance
- Psilocybin license: Satori Farms PDX LLC, owned by gourmet mushroom producer Tori Armbrust, became the first operation in Oregon — and in the U.S. — to receive a legal manufacturer license for psilocybin under the Oregon Health Authority’s framework.
- Oregon Psilocybin Services: More than 200 license and worker permit applications have been filed with the program since the licensing process began following voters’ approval of guided psilocybin use in November 2020 C.E.
- Facilitator training: The first cohort of students has graduated from state-approved psilocybin facilitator training programs, a milestone Oregon Health Authority officials called “historic” in a public statement.
How Oregon got here
Oregon voters passed Measure 109 in November 2020 C.E., making the state the first in the U.S. to legalize supervised psilocybin services for adults. The law does not permit recreational use. Instead, it created a licensed framework — farmers, labs, service centers, and trained facilitators — designed to ensure that people access psilocybin in a structured, supported setting.
The Oregon Health Authority oversees the program through its Oregon Psilocybin Services (OPS) section. After years of rulemaking, the first licenses are now being issued.
“We congratulate Tori Armbrust of Satori Farms PDX LLC for being issued the first psilocybin license in Oregon’s history and for representing women leading the way for the emerging psilocybin ecosystem,” said OPS section manager Angie Allbee in the agency’s announcement.
A farmer’s perspective
Armbrust, who has worked in gourmet mushroom production for years, described the moment as significant — and complicated. She told DoubleBlind that she has seen people go to extreme lengths to access psilocybin, and that a regulated market gives those people a safer path.
But she was direct about the challenge of cost. Armbrust expects to spend roughly $20,000 per year in regulatory fees and associated costs before she grows a single psilocybin mushroom. One service center she will supply is aiming to charge $500 per session. She hopes those prices fall as the market matures.
“Many of the people who need it aren’t going to be able to afford insane amounts of money,” she said. “I hope the service fees drop in the coming years.”
Her immediate goal is to supply two service centers within two months of starting operations.
Facilitators ready to open
Alongside the farm licenses, the first cohort of facilitators has completed state-approved training. Dave Naftalin, chief service center operator at Drop Thesis — which also received manufacturing approval — said he hopes to open his center within 90 days. He completed a 10-week accelerated course at the Changa Institute, which he said cost $9,500.
“It’s really nice to get it above board and make this medicine accessible for everyone,” Naftalin told DoubleBlind. “Everyone deserves this and should have access.”
He added that the most important next step for long-term access is federal rescheduling. As long as psilocybin remains a Schedule I substance, health insurance cannot cover sessions — a significant barrier for anyone who could benefit most.
Real momentum, real friction
Oregon’s rollout has not been without setbacks. The Synthesis Institute, which was training more than 200 prospective facilitators, filed for bankruptcy earlier in 2023 C.E., leaving students without refunds and scrambling to find alternative programs. The collapse was a serious disruption for people who had invested thousands of dollars and months of time.
A separate legislative proposal from state senator Elizabeth Steiner would require service centers to submit detailed client data — including names — to a state database. Legal scholar Mason Marks of Harvard Law School raised privacy concerns, telling Lucid News that such a database could become a target for federal law enforcement, given that psilocybin remains illegal under federal law. The debate is unresolved.
These tensions reflect a genuine difficulty: building a state-level system for something the federal government still classifies as a controlled substance. Cost, privacy, and access remain open questions that the program’s administrators, farmers, and facilitators will have to work through together.
Still, the licensing of Oregon’s first psilocybin farms marks a real threshold. The Oregon Health Authority’s psilocybin program is now operational in a way that it simply was not a year ago. Research into psilocybin’s therapeutic potential has accelerated significantly over the past decade, with studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine and other peer-reviewed journals suggesting meaningful benefits for treatment-resistant depression. The FDA has granted psilocybin Breakthrough Therapy designation for depression on two separate occasions — a signal that federal thinking, however slowly, is shifting. Oregon is turning that research momentum into a real-world framework before any other U.S. state has done so.
“Hopefully, it’ll be available for everyone nationwide soon,” Armbrust said.
Whether that happens will depend on how well Oregon’s early system performs — on safety, on access, and on whether the people who need it most can actually afford to walk through the door. The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies and others are watching closely, as is the rest of the country.
Read more
For more on this story, see: DoubleBlind Magazine
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