Colorado’s legal psychedelic-assisted therapy industry is anticipated to get going in 2025, and Summit County towns are now in talks about how they want it to look for them.

The state has made it clear municipalities can’t prohibit these operations in their communities, but they can regulate aspects such as time, place and manner. 

Frisco, Breckenridge and Silverthorne officials discussed what it could mean for them at their respective Town Council meetings July 23, Aug. 13 and Aug. 14. Many likened the process to the roll out of recreational marijuana centers following its legalization a decade prior. 

Breckenridge’s assistant town manager Scott Reid highlighted one key difference between the two models at an Aug 13. meeting: people take products bought from recreational marijuana facilities home with them and, with the soon-to-be introduced “natural medicine” industry, the product must be consumed on-site and cannot be taken home. 

Colorado voters approved Proposition 122, which created the Natural Medicine Health Act and decriminalized the personal possession, growing and sharing of five different psychedelic substances, including psilocybin, or magic mushrooms, in 2022.

While the act decriminalized growing and sharing, it did not decriminalize the sale of these substances, which is where the healing centers come in. For now, there will be no dispensary-esque establishments in Colorado and people interested in purchasing must do so in a supervised setting.  

Reid walked the council through what operations at these healing centers will look like according to how the legislation is written. He said the healing centers will have a facilitator who administers the substance and there will also be a preparation aspect where people are given a run down of what to expect. He added it looked as though there was also going to be a post-session aspect where people give insight into what the experience was like. 

He said officials from the town and police department met ahead of bringing the concept to council so they could provide recommendations about how to regulate place, time and manner. 

He said staffers did not recommend regulating the operations hours of the facilities at this time and it was best to first see how the concept played out first. 

Council member Jay Beckerman asked if a lack of time regulation opened the door for these to facilities being considered a late-night activity.

Reid said staffers considered scenarios like “what if you’re going to have a bachelor party that comes in and wants to experience this,” and, given the nature of the facilities being for natural medicine and the numerous steps involved in the process, they felt it was unlikely those scenarios could arise.

“It doesn’t lend itself necessarily to a ‘we’re going to go and have fun with this’ (situation).” 

After hearing Reid’s explanation Breckenridge Town Council moved to refrain from a time limitation at this time. 

Another recommendation from staffers council showed support for using a similar overlay district for dispensaries to ensure the facilities weren’t in places the town didn’t want them to be, like downtown Main Street.

Council member Todd Rankin said he agreed with staffers on their recommendations, noting the only thing he would maybe like to see is going beyond the state’s requirement to have the facilities be 1,000 away from places like schools and increase the distance requirement. He added he wanted to see how things played out with the roll out of the facilities before introducing any other regulations. 

Silverthorne Mayor Anne-Marie Sandquist shared a similar sentiment at the town’s Aug. 14 meeting. 

“We were smart enough to put a moratorium on (marijuana retail) licenses … just to kind of see what other communities did,” Sandquist said, noting she favored waiting and seeing how things played out elsewhere before Silverthore introduced its own regulations. 

Town attorney Karl Hanlon said he wasn’t sure if there was even enough of a demand in Silverthorne for it to get one of these facilities.

Silverthorne officials did not make any decisions at the Aug. 14 meeting and plan to continue the discussion.