Legal Status

Psilocybin and psilocin are Schedule I controlled substances under the federal Controlled Substances Act of 1970, meaning federal authorities classify them as having no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Both claims are at odds with the clinical literature; the scheduling has not caught up.

Federal law applies in every state, on federal property, and in interstate transport. A state can decide not to enforce possession or cultivation under its own laws — as Oregon and Colorado have — but federal agencies (DEA, FBI, U.S. Postal Inspectors) retain jurisdiction. In practice, federal prosecutions of small-scale personal use have been rare; federal enforcement focuses on trafficking, interstate commerce, and activity on federal land.

Spores themselves — which contain no psilocybin — occupy a narrow federal gap and are legal to possess federally for microscopy purposes, though a handful of states (CA, GA, ID) specifically criminalize them.

On 18 April 2026, the President signed an executive order titled Accelerating Medical Treatments for Serious Mental Illness, directing the FDA to prioritize psychedelic review, instructing the DEA to reduce research barriers, and allocating $50M in ARPA-H match funding for state psychedelic research. The order does not reschedule psilocybin, but it signals expansion of Right-to-Try pathways to Schedule I substances. On 24 April 2026, the FDA awarded Commissioner's National Priority Vouchers to Compass Pathways' COMP360 (treatment-resistant depression) and Usona Institute's psilocybin (major depressive disorder), the first concrete federal actions implementing the order.

Implementation has continued through mid-2026. On 14 July 2026, the FDA issued final guidance on clinical investigations of psychedelic drugs, detailing expected trial populations and safety assessments, and scheduled a hybrid public hearing on supervised psychedelic therapy for 14 September 2026 (docket FDA-2026-N-7542; written comments accepted through 5 October). The VA and HHS also signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on psychedelic research and the potential rollout of any FDA-approved treatments to veterans, and on 5 August 2026 the VA launched PIVOT, a five-site clinical trial of psilocybin for veterans with treatment-resistant depression.

Congress has begun to move as well. On 24 July 2026the House passed the FY2027 National Defense Authorization Act carrying two voice-vote amendments: one extends the Defense Department’s psychedelic clinical-trial program (psilocybin, MDMA, ibogaine, 5-MeO-DMT) through September 2033, and the other codifies parts of the April executive order by requiring the VA to designate an official responsible for psychedelic therapies and report progress to Congress. Both await Senate action. A standalone bipartisan bill, H.R. 9559 (introduced 30 June), would codify the order more fully.

On the drug-approval track, Compass Pathways began a rolling New Drug Application for COMP360 after the FDA granted rolling review on 24 April 2026; the company reported six-month results from its second Phase 3 trial on 7 July and expects to complete the submission in Q4 2026, targeting a launch in the first half of 2027 if the FDA approves and the DEA reschedules the product. Usona’s Phase 3 program continues and has not yet filed. None of these steps reschedules psilocybin itself; a separate petition (Dr. Sunil Aggarwal’s) to move it from Schedule I to Schedule II was referred by the DEA to HHS for review in August 2025 and remains there, with no decision announced as of September 2026 despite a June 2026 request from the petitioner’s counsel that the agencies act promptly in light of the executive order.

Anticipating that approval, a growing bloc of states has passed “trigger laws” that pre-position state schedules to follow federal action automatically: Colorado, North Dakota, Nebraska, and Arizona in 2025, and Virginia, South Dakota, and West Virginia in 2026. These laws change nothing today and cover only an FDA-approved pharmaceutical product (in most cases the crystalline polymorph formulation), not mushrooms. Similar bills died in Kansas and are pending in Pennsylvania. Filter the state table for “Active legislation” to see them.

Psilocybin and psilocin are Schedule III controlled substances under Canada’s Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA). Unauthorized possession, cultivation, production, and sale remain criminal offences nationwide.

On 5 January 2022, Health Canada amended the Food and Drug Regulations to make psilocybin (and MDMA) once again accessible through the Special Access Program (SAP), a pathway that had been closed since 2013. Under the SAP, physicians may request authorization for a specific patient with a serious or life-threatening condition where conventional treatments have failed or are unsuitable — predominantly end-of-life distress in terminal cancer patients and treatment-resistant depression.

A class exemption under section 56(1) of the CDSA covers the supply chain — practitioners, pharmacists, hospitals, and licensed dealers handling psilocybin tied to an SAP authorization — removing the need for an individual exemption at each link. A separate class exemption authorizes at-home administration of psilocybin and MDMA by participants in approved clinical trials.

Bill C-5 (2022) removed mandatory minimums for several CDSA offences and encouraged prosecutorial diversion for simple possession. It is not psilocybin-specific but lowered the floor for personal-possession prosecutions across the schedule.

Two private members’ bills now target the SAP bottleneck directly. Bill C-265 (Marcus Powlowski, Liberal; introduced 11 March 2026) would require the Minister to maintain a list of pre-approved SAP drugs, drop the requirement to exhaust other treatments first, and allow real-world clinical evidence to count; it passed second reading and is before the House health committee. Bill C-286, “Thomas’ Bill” (Corey Tochor, Conservative; introduced 16 June 2026 and named for the late Thomas Hartle, the first Canadian granted legal psilocybin therapy), would go further by rescheduling psilocybin so physicians could prescribe it without case-by-case approval and by directing priority review; it has had first reading only. Private members’ bills rarely become law, but these are the first federal bills aimed squarely at psilocybin access.