Marijuana Moment: Alaska Psychedelics Campaign Launches Signature Drive To Put Legalization Measure On 2026 Ballot

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Alaska activists have officially launched a signature drive to place an initiative on the 2026 ballot to legalize certain psychedelics such as psilocybin and DMT.

About a month after the lieutenant governor’s office certified the measure for circulation, a combination of volunteer and paid petitioners for the Alaska Natural Medicine campaign got to work last week after receiving initiative booklets from the state.

With a requirement to collect 35,000 signatures, advocates are “working hard to make that happen as we get into the fall season here,” David Karabelnikoff, Alaska policy advisor and member of the steering committee for the campaign, told Marijuana Moment on Monday.

Having personally collected signatures over the past week, Karabelnikoff said he’s “found support from, surprisingly, a wide variety of people.” That even included a “long-time member” of Narcotics Anonymous, which counsels people on a general principle of abstinence from drugs.

There’s a “whole variety of cross-sections of people that are willing to give the voters a chance to make the decision on this at the election ballot box,” Karabelnikoff said. “And I think that plant medicine and natural medicines are kind of a cross-cutting topic.”

“We found support from from both conservative people as well as progressives or liberals,” he said. “Alaska has a unique balance—also with this really strong libertarian spirit up here, where, if you’re staying in your own lane and not hurting anyone, then we kind of feel like the government should stay out of our business.”

A policy outline from the campaign explains the proposal as “building off of” Colorado’s voter-approved 2022 Natural Medicine Health Act, under which facilitators recently administered the state’s first legal dose of psilocybin.

In addition to establishing a licensed psychedelics industry in the state, the Alaska measure would legalize non-commercial use, cultivation and sharing of DMT, non-peyote mescaline, psilocybin and psilocin among adults 21 and older under a so-called “grow, gather, gift” model popular among psychedelic reform proponents.

The measure “shifts away from a restrictive healing center model, allowing individual practitioners to provide [natural medicine] in their offices and at-home facilitation, increasing accessibility in rural communities” that are common in Alaska, the organizers’ policy outline says.

Cultivation would need to take place in a space no larger that 12 feet by 12 feet and remain out of public view, and growers would be required to take reasonable steps to prevent access by minors.

Transfers of psychedelics between adults, meanwhile, would need to occur without any form of payment.

Public consumption of the substances would be forbidden, subject to a civil fine of up to $100.

On the commercial side, Alaska would license healing centers—where certified facilitators would supervise psychedelic administration—as well as testing labs, cultivation facilities, product manufacturers, handlers and other related businesses.

The application round for licenses would need to begin no later than July 1, 2028.

Facilities would need to be majority Alaska-owned, with at least half of ownership held by residents of the state.

Traditional healers would also be protected under the proposed initiative for “ceremonial, spiritual, or cultural use of plant medicines” through legal exemptions to state drug laws. They would not need to hold a state license, the proposal says, “but must be certified or credentialed as a traditional practitioner.”

The system would be overseen by a Natural Medicine Control Board a “regulatory and quasi-judicial agency” that would be housed within the Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development. It would include members from the public safety and public health sectors, as well as someone from a rural area, a representative of the natural medicine industry, an Alaska Native traditional healer, a professional practitioner of psychedelic-assisted therapy and someone either from the general public or the natural medicine industry.

A separate Natural Medicine Advisory Committee consisting of 15 members would make recommendations around the program. That body would include mental heath professionals, natural medicine therapists or researchers, tribal representatives, a physician, a military veteran, a first responder, healthcare experts and others.

As for traditional use, the measure would also create a Traditional Use Council to develop best practices and educational materials around Indigenous-based psychedelic use and harm reduction principles. That would include a separate credentialing or certification process that “may include consideration of lineage, apprenticeship, community recognition, and cultural practice, rather than formal clinical or academic training.”

The state Department of Law conducted an analysis on the legality of the proposal, including with respect to federal law.

Attorney General Treg Taylor (R) said that the measure would no more conflict with federal policy than the state’s existing marijuana legalization law does.

“While the [Controlled Substances Act] strictly prohibits the manufacture, distribution, and possession of marijuana, we found no controlling authority sufficient to declare the initiative unconstitutional on its face,” he said of the prior cannabis initiative.

“The same reasoning holds true when applied to” the psychedelics measure, Taylor said. “We see no significant distinction based on the type of Schedule 1 substance at the center of the initiative application. Questions of federal enforcement (or lack thereof) and pre-emption when a state enacts divergent drug control laws remain largely unresolved. To the extent [the psychedelics measure’ presents pre-emption and enforcement concerns, Alaska’s marijuana regulatory scheme currently implicates those same legal issues.”

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A poll last year found that nearly half (49.4 percent) of Alaska adults would support a ballot measure to more broadly remove criminal penalties for using substances such as psilocybin mushrooms.

That support rose markedly—to nearly two thirds (65 percent)—when participants were told that Alaska has high rates of mental illnesses that could potentially be treated with psychedelics.

Last year, Alaska lawmakers passed legislation to create a state task force to study how to license and regulate psychedelic-assisted therapy. The measure took effect without the signature of Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R).

So far two other states have facilitated psychedelics programs that are fully operational. Oregon voters legalized therapeutic psilocybin in 2020, and Colorado’s program was passed at the ballot box in 2022, with the state’s governor signing legislation a year later to create the regulatory framework for the program.

Separately in Alaska, a federal judge ruled in June that state officials did not violate the constitution when restricting intoxicating hemp products in 2023.

Photo elements courtesy of carlosemmaskype and Apollo.

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