PORTLAND, Ore. (PORTLAND TRIBUNE) — When Oregon voters approved Measure 109 in 2020, the state gave the Oregon Health Authority and stakeholders — therapists, medical professionals, neo-shamen — two years to come up with rules on how legal psilocybin would be utilized in this state. The main regulations to prevent Oregon turning into a party destination for would-be trippers were that the person taking psilocybin would have to be monitored by a licensed facilitator/guide, the mushrooms would have to be grown in Oregon by a licensed grower, and they would have to be tested at a licensed lab.
As of late April, several facilitators have trained and three have been been licensed. No treatment centers have been licensed yet, and none are expected to open before summer. One testing lab has been OK’d, Rose City Laboratories. And three manufacturers (growers) of the chosen mushroom, Psilocybe Cubensis, have been licensed and are growing it.
They are Andreas Met of Medford, Gared Hansen of Walterville, just east of Eugene, and Tori Armbrust of Southeast Portland.
Being the first grower to be issued a license, Armbrust, 33, was all over the media in March, although she says misleading headlines and stock photos of mushrooms taught her a few lessons about becoming the face of an industry that is being watched nationwide.
Armbrust is the owner of Satori Farms, which, as she describes it, is some plastic totes in an office building in Southeast Portland near I-205. “I was just looking for somewhere sub-$1,000 (a month, to rent),” she said cheerfully over lunch in Montavilla recently. Armbrust still keeps her day job as a property manager, but her goal is to phase into full-time mushroom growing, to supply the expected market.
Read more at PortlandTribune.com.
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