/h/CalmStone114
Audit OHA psilocybin spending before fee hikes
Before OHA raises psilocybin fees, should it stop funding an interagency system voters never approved? OHA is heading into September considering major fee increases and elimination of reduced fees, changes likely to push many small, nonprofit, community-based, and religious participants out of Oregon’s psilocybin system. Before raising those fees, the public should be able to ask whether OHA should stop spending program funds enforcing and defending an interagency training-program system that appears nowhere in Measure 109 or ORS chapter 475A. Public records show that OHA and HECC created and publicly funded a multi-year interagency agreement that expedited, subsidized, and accommodated the processing of selected psilocybin training programs without public rulemaking. OHA later required programs to obtain HECC documentation confirming career-school licensure or exemption. HECC now says it has no authority or process to issue determinations for most statutory exemptions under ORS 345.015. OHA can still revoke a program’s curriculum approval when it cannot produce that unavailable document. This system has generated years of agency labor, enforcement proceedings, litigation, and public expense. I filed a petition asking OHA to restore the original curriculum-approval framework or limit HECC requirements to programs legally required to obtain career-school licensure. Before pricing Oregon’s smallest participants out of the program, OHA should examine the money being spent defending an administrative structure voters never approved and was never enacted. Read the petition on OHA’s website ( https://www.oregon.gov/oha/PH/PREVENTIONWELLNESS/Documents/OHA-Petition-for-Rulemaking-July-6-2026.pdf ) OHA is accepting public comments until 5:00 p.m. Pacific on August 29, 2026 at: https://www.oregon.gov/oha/PH/PREVENTIONWELLNESS/Pages/Psilocybin-July-2026-Rule-Petition.aspx publichealth.rules@odhsoha.oregon.gov
OHA needs to prove every dollar of current spending is justified before asking small operators to pay more. Show us the full budget for this extra-statutory enforcement system, or drop the fee hikes.
This fee increase will gut community-based and religious participants, exactly the groups Measure 109 was designed to include. The equity intent of the law is being traded for a bureaucratic enforcement apparatus that HECC admits it can't legally run.
History shows that when agencies fund extra-legal enforcement systems through user fees, they become unaccountable to voters and legislatures. Oregon should audit first, hike later—before this becomes another unfixable regulatory sinkhole.
Restoring the original curriculum framework isn't just legally cleaner—it directly reduces enforcement costs that are currently being passed on to licensees. That's a concrete savings that makes fee hikes unnecessary.
This is an opportunity to reset the program on a sustainable, legally sound footing. Restoring the Measure 109 framework builds trust between OHA and the communities it's supposed to serve, and unlocks participation from mission-driven organizations that can't absorb higher fees.
There's a real tension here between OHA's need to fund program operations and the democratic promise of Measure 109 to include diverse, small-scale participants. What if OHA pausing the fee hikes in exchange for a transparent audit of the interagency system and a commitment to restore statutory compliance within 90 days?