Are Mushrooms Legal in Colorado? The Answer is a Little Tricky

• By Reilly Capps
• September 18, 2023October 30, 2023
• Colorado Psilocybin Articles psilocybin mushrooms psychedelic therapy
• With 1 comment

Are mushrooms legal in Colorado? “Yes, mushrooms are legal,” says Matt Brockmeier, attorney for Emerge, a leading psychedelic law firm. 

Sales, however, remain illegal. “You can’t buy them,” says Brockmeier. It’s also illegal to use mushrooms in public, such as at a concert or on a camping trip. Psychedelic mushrooms are still federally illegal. 

Colorado has one of the most liberal laws around psilocybin-containing mushrooms in the world. In November 2022, voters passed the Natural Medicine Health Act. The law has two main parts:

• The law will create “healing centers,” where people can take mushrooms with a trained sitter. 
• The Natural Medicine Act also legalized mushrooms for “personal use.” Personal use means anyone over 21 can grow, have, use, and give away mushrooms–in private. 

EXCITING NEWS: Click here to get on the waiting list for Colorado’s state-approved psilocybin therapy now!

Are Mushrooms Legal in Colorado?

Well, there is a magic mushroom dispensary in Denver, Colorado. So even though mushrooms are illegal to sell, sales are happening. If you go into certain head shops and ask politely, the shop may have a jar of psychedelic mushrooms behind the counter they will sell you. 

Some folks are being bolder. There is an ad in Denver’s local alternative weekly for a psilocybin mushroom dispensary, which opened recently. It’s the first mushroom dispensary in Colorado, to my knowledge.

The shop is in a hip, arty part of Denver in a humdrum office building down a hall, next to a Chinese medicine shop. On the inside, the shop looks a lot like a cannabis dispensary, although more bare-bones. It has a table, some chairs, some mycelium growing in tubs on a shelf, and a row of glass jars with different strains mushrooms. An eighth of an ounce of Jack Frost sells for $40. Jars hold Hillbilly Pumpkin and Roger Rabbit mushrooms -– variations of psilocybe cubensis, the most popular species. 

During a recent visit to the shop, the dispensary owner showed a shaky grasp of the Colorado regulations. “There’s currently no laws,” the owner said. (This mushroom dispensary “is not legal,” Brockmeier says flatly.)

RELATED: Psilocybin Laws In Colorado And Oregon: What’s The Difference?

Mushrooms Have Therapeutic Uses

Clinical trials show mushrooms and psilocybin are useful for treating depression, when done in the context of therapy, with a doctor’s prescription. Psychedelic mushrooms are among the safest drugs, some researchers say, in terms of harms to self and harms to society. But mushrooms are not for everybody, and they don’t always have good results for mental and spiritual health.

RELATED: Divinity for the Non-religious: How Shroom Churches Offer Meaning

Advocates Have Mixed Feelings About Dispensaries

Some mushroom-lovers and advocates welcome this new dispensary. “I’m tickled pink,” says Tyler Williams, who was among the first people to try and legalize mushrooms in the Mile High City, back in 2018. 

Other activists think dispensaries violate the spirit of Colorado’s laws. 

“It undermines all our hard work,” says Travis Tyler Fluck, who led the successful 2019 campaign to decriminalize mushrooms in Denver. His vision was for more community-based mushroom sharing, and not commercial sales. 

Fluck also believes dispensaries like this new one are too risky. There’s no screening, very little education about the X factors of set, setting, preparation and integration, and no follow-up. 

The dispensary owner gave a customer some questionable info. He said if you eat a whole magic mushroom chocolate bar you might trip for 18 hours, which is unlikely; that mushrooms deplete serotonin, and there’s no evidence for that; that marijuana can smooth out a mushroom trip, which is only sometimes true, and that “mushrooms, THC and CBD operate on the same channels,” which is misleading. 

RELATED: How Long Do Magic Mushrooms Last?

(HeaingMaps is not using the owner’s name or showing his face because of the illegal nature of his activities.) 

Are Psychedelic Mushrooms Legal in Colorado? What is Personal Use in Colorado?

So, again, the main way that mushrooms are legal in Colorado is for personal use, not sales. Personal use, the law says, includes “counseling, spiritual guidance, beneficial community-based use and healing [and] supported use.” The definition of those things are sometimes up for debate.

Here are some things that are clearly legal under state law: 

• Taking your own mushrooms in your own home. 
• Giving mushrooms to a friend or family member. 
• Holding a mushroom circle in your backyard. 
• Using mushrooms with your rabbi, pastor, or spiritual guide. 

Magic Mushroom Dispensaries Around the Country

The owner of Denver’s first mushroom dispensary is riding a trend. At least 20 states, cities and counties legalized or decriminalized mushrooms. There are mushroom dispensaries popping up in the Bay Area, Michigan, and Washington, D.C. Some are more visible than others. (Some have websites; Yelp lists at least one.) So far, law enforcement is largely turning a blind eye.

“We’ve seen in other countries, namely Canada, Vancouver, where people are being brash,” says Brockmeier. “They may not get shut down on day one but they do get shut down. And they do get charged with crimes.” Cops recently raided a magic mushroom shop in Ontario. In Oregon, where the laws are similar to Colorado’s, Portland cops raided a mushroom dispensary and charged the owner with 40 felony charges.

The Food and Drug Administration called psilocybin-assisted therapy a “breakthough,” and could approve the treatment in the next few years. If that happens, doctors can prescribe psilocybin, and patients can take it with a trained sitter in the context of therapy. There will be no sales. 

READ NEXT: B+ Mushrooms: Psilocybin that’s Not a Quite a Perfect Score, Yet Never a Fail