Michael Lavery is a member of the Becket, Massachusetts Select Board and the Green-Rainbow candidate for the 3rd Berkshire District state representative seat in November. While Becket’s town meeting isn’t for another eight months, Lavery is attempting to rally support for his citizen petition to decriminalize entheogens. The term applies to an array of psychedelics used in spiritual practice, like certain mushrooms or peyote. While the substances remain illegal federally, they’ve been used across the globe for thousands of years. Lavery spoke to WAMC about why he thinks the move would benefit Becket.
LAVERY: There are certain towns that have already done this in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, but in a broader sense, a lot of legislation statewide and across the country. We've seen cannabis in medical form in 38 states legalized and a lot of states have already made recreational legal. In that similar vein, a couple states, Oregon and Washington state, have already decriminalized all drugs and made it just a misdemeanor. Portugal as a country has done that. This proposal that I will be bringing to town meeting in Becket in May is to decriminalize only entheogens. It's a bit of a tongue twister, but an entheogen is a type of drug that has been used ritually or spiritually, usually in ceremonial settings, in what we would consider primitive cultures, although they were highly complex and developed like, South American cultures, the use of psilocybin and ayahuasca and ibogaine. That's it in a nutshell. The four towns that have legalized it currently are Cambridge, Somerville in the east, and Easthampton and Northampton in the west, near, closer to where we are.
WAMC: Now, why is this an important issue now, Michael? Why is it something that you want to bring forward to the folks in Becket?
Well, I brought it up at the Select Board meeting, and my main point was that some of these drugs have been studied in previous years before they were criminalized by Nixon and other folks in the 60s, and they were used to treat people in hospice care near end of life and it made them not dread the fear of their life ebbing away. And most recently, the same colleges and medical centers that had used that for research purposes have been treating people with PTSD, ADHD, and I just want folks, especially in this commonwealth where we are lauded for our great medical research and biogenetic developments, to be able to go back and study these things that may have been taken off the list of things that could be used to treat folks with these illnesses.
Is there money in this for the Berkshires? Is there a chance that there's some sort of economic advantage to gain by clearing the runway for more legalization of different substances like the ones in question?
Well, certainly in the future- I think it's early days to say that it would enrich the pockets of folks in the Berkshires, but maybe spiritually and mentally, it would help. I know that MassCann and the movement to legalize cannabis took 30 years, and now it's a billion-dollar industry. It's making more money than alcohol in the state, according to the CCC and the ABCC boards. So, I think it could be lucrative, although there's no way to read that crystal ball.
There's obviously going to be some folks out there who maybe hear about this and feel that it's farther afield than maybe a lot of conventional politics. Do you have a message for skeptics about this topic?
Yeah, absolutely. There's great books and DVDs and, on Netflix, a popular series called ‘How To Change Your Mind?’ And it's done by the author who wrote the original text, and he explores a different psychedelic and their therapeutic use in each episode, and it's highly informational. You know, Joe Rogan is a controversial figure, and I don't support all of his views, but he also has explored DMT and other things. DMT is the psychedelic toad of the Sonoran Desert. I'm not suggesting you go out licking toads or harvesting their venom because they're already endangered, but there are synthesized versions of it. I just think that people have enough information out there and they can make their own informed decisions. I don't think it should be used by any young people or anybody who doesn't consult with their physician or shamanistic leader or spiritual healer in a controlled setting. This isn't something that I'm talking about should be used while operating a vehicle or anything or, recreationally, like, tripping, just for purposes to get high or whatever.
Is this something that's important your life? Has this has been helpful to you, or something you have a first-person experience with?
No, I haven't had the benefits of it, but I hope that folks can. I know some folks early on benefited from the CBD in seizures and things, and that took a while to get legalized. I just hope that I can help other fellow veterans who have gone through a lot more than I did in my service to the country and had to serve overseas and things. If we can help in any way, that would be a tremendous boon.
So, walk us through what happens with this. You have this proposal- What's the trajectory look like? What's the timeline? When are folks going to hear more about this?
Folks in Becket will see information about the town meeting before it's held in May, and we need 10 signatures to get on the warrant as a citizen’s petition. So, it's a low bar and I think it'll be on there. It's going to include much of this same wording of the four towns that have already legalized or decriminalized it. Folks would look for a bill that would not make these things legal, and certainly, they're still illegal in the eyes of the state and the high courts of the federal lands. So, they would probably be seized if they were in possession, but police would have such a low priority on these spiritual drugs that the person would not get a ticket or be held in in the criminal case for that.
