Detroit voters will decide To decriminalize psychedelics

Detroit — City voters on Tuesday will decide whether to decriminalize psychedelic plants and if Detroit’s charter should be amended to allow for citizen-driven ballot initiatives that impact city spending. 

Voter-initiated Proposal E asks Detroiters if they believe the personal possession and therapeutic use of entheogenic plants like psilocybin mushrooms or peyote should be decriminalized to the fullest extent permitted under Michigan law. 

If passed, the measure would not legalize the use and possession of psychedelics but it would make it the city’s lowest law enforcement priority.

A second measure, Proposal S, seeks to amend a section of Detroit’s City Charter to allow voters to push ordinances that include appropriating money.

The initiatives are among three being decided by Detroit voters in the general election. City voters on Nov. 2 also will decide if a task force should be created to consider reparations for residents. 

Proposal E goes to Detroit voters after Democratic state Sens. Jeff Irwin of Ann Arbor and Adam Hollier of Detroit last month introduced a bill to decriminalize two popular psychedelic drugs in a bid to make them available for therapeutic use.

Under Senate Bill 631, possession and use of psilocybin, commonly known as magic mushrooms, and mescaline, found in cacti that is comparable to LSD, would be “exempt from criminal prosecution in certain circumstances.”

Todd Perkins, an attorney who founded the People’s Voice, a nonprofit advocating for the formation of a reparations task force and Proposal S, has called Proposal S a “gateway” to reparations that empowers voters.

 Proposal R, which asks whether Detroit should form a committee to consider reparations for residents

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