Santa Cruz Becomes the Second California City to Decriminalize Natural Psychedelics

It’s only the third in the nation to take this step.

With little opposition, the city of Santa Cruz unanimously agreed to decriminalize adult use, possession and cultivation of entheogenic psychoactive plants and fungi. The California city follows in the footsteps of Denver and Oakland with the move.

According to The Santa Cruz Sentinel, “The Santa Cruz City Council decision, first championed last year by Mayor Justin Cummings and Councilmembers Sandy Brown and Drew Glover, came after a vulnerable outpouring of community testimony, many sharing personal mental health struggles and efforts to successfully treat their symptoms.

“The drug war needs to be ended in small deliberate steps,” says Decriminalize Santa Cruz co-founder Sean Cutler. “We acknowledge that the U.S. government has spent 50 years indoctrinating Americans to believe that alcohol is good and everything else is bad, evil, for poor people. They have stigmatized everything but alcohol and cigarettes.”

You can read more about the decision here.