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April 27, 2023
Dear Commissioners:
Plant-based “mind-altering” substances range from caffeine and chili peppers to mushrooms and cacti. The fact that some of these are legal and some are not is more about money, fear,
greed and ignorance than it is about any sensible evaluation of the relative potential benefits of these substances. Without the money-driven lobbying of pharmaceutical companies and
the fear-based actions of people like J. Edgar Hoover, most of these substances would likely be legal and widely appreciated for their potential therapeutic value. Instead, we have
a system of draconian laws preventing us from accessing the many benefits that these substances can help to create.
What we are hoping is that you, the Jefferson County Commissioners, will take a more enlightened and informed approach to our inherent right to use these substances, if and as we see
fit, which should include our right to grow or otherwise produce them for our own use.
In 2013, I was diagnosed with a cancer, which I was told would kill me, sooner rather than later. In 2015, under the care of an M.D. who had extensive experience with the medical uses
of entheogens, I took a large dose of psilocybin. The ensuing experience was life-changing for me, in the most positive of ways. I lost my fear of death and I also gave up the idea
that I shouldn’t die. Instead, I realized that there is no particular way things are supposed to be – that is just a story we tell ourselves – things are just the way they are. The
emotional and psychic load that experience removed is indescribable, wonderful.
In 2018 my cancer went away. I am not crediting the psilocybin with that, but who knows. I certainly don’t understand how life works, much less why it works the way it does.
Had it not been for the support of this immensely brave doctor, who was willing to go out on a limb to assist me, my life would have been very different. Oh, and I have no interest
in taking this substance again. I don’t need to. So the idea that these substances lead one down some dark path to destruction is just more of the disinformation with which they have
been wrongly associated.
Thanks for reading this.
Niles Powell
2508 Holcomb Street
Por4t Townsend, WA 98368