Last week, Gov. Michelle Lujan signed the state’s annual budget, which included $630,000 for the creation of a medical psilocybin treatment equity fund. New Mexico is the first state in the country to allocate funds that will ensure residents can receive treatment no matter their income.
Psilocybin is a type of psychedelic and psychoactive compounds that temporarily alters a person’s senses.
“How we perceive our environment, how we perceive time, our emotional state. And in therapy, those temporary alterations of our senses, can really open up new ways of thinking about ourselves, thinking about our lives,” said Denali Wilson, director of strategic support at the Healing Advocacy Fund.
The organization advocates for state-regulated access to psychedelic therapies. She said psilocybin can be used for post-traumatic stress, treatment-resistant depression, substance use disorder, and end-of-life care needs.
Wilson said the New Mexico Legislature laid the groundwork for the equity fund by passing the New Mexico Medical Psilocybin Act in 2025, which created the state-regulated therapy program. It also added an additional $300,000 appropriation this year to the University of New Mexico for psychedelic-assisted therapy for those at the end of their lives.
“To have UNM, our homegrown experts, looking really, really closely at what that care model needs to look like, it's just going to inform the decisions that we make in the structure of the state program in a really meaningful way,” she said.
The state's medical psilocybin program will launch at the end of this year.
Support for this coverage comes from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
