Vince Sliwoski in Lucid News

Vince Sliwoski, a lawyer at the international law firm Harris Bricken and editor of the firm’s Psychedelics Law Blog, pointed out that the 200 public comments on psilocybin rule making submitted was “far from overwhelming.”

Sliwoski explained that this was consistent with “the phenomenon of interested parties having strong opinions about controlled substances programs (and government programs more generally), but declining to contribute to the record.” According to Sliwoski, the relative lack of comments about regulation also reflects “the fact that the regulated psilocybin industry in Oregon will be smaller than many people initially expected.” In other words, he believes that many in Oregon’s psychedelic underground are keeping their distance for now.

Other insights about the final rules that Sliwoski picked up on include the observation that outside parties still will not be allowed to be present when psilocybin is being administered. The rules about facilitators needing to call emergency services at the slightest sign of distress have also been loosened. “The rules have been amended to require service centers to adopt procedures for client emergencies, and to take mitigation steps prior to contacting emergency services,” said Sliwoski.

Hilary Bricken in The Washington Post

“It’s incredibly difficult to make money if you cannot scale at a huge capacity to combat the inability to take those deductions,” said Hilary Bricken, a cannabis business lawyer at Harris Bricken in Los Angeles.

Dan Harris in South China Morning Post

Still, the government’s Covid policy shift and its efforts to reassure foreign investors have not swayed American manufacturers to reconsider exiting China, according to Dan Harris of the law firm Harris Bricken.

“They want out of China because they do not believe China is any longer good for business, and they are also worried about China’s relations with the rest of the world,” said Harris, who advises American companies doing business overseas.
Even companies that have profited handsomely in China were trying to reduce their footprint in the country to minimise their risks, he added.

Harris painted a bleak picture next year for foreign entities with China-based manufacturing, saying the country’s immunity to the coronavirus was not strong and that it lacked “good vaccines” for it.

Dan Harris in The New York Times

“If you look at the people who draw the analogies between Google and Facebook and TikTok, they’re either unsophisticated or they have an ax to grind in favor of TikTok,” said Dan Harris, a lawyer who works with foreign companies in China and writes the China Law Blog. “Most serious people see a difference. It doesn’t mean they’re all great or all bad, but there is a difference.”

Vince Sliwoski in DoubleBlind

The recent election has added some friction to the implementation of Measure 109. In November, more than twenty Oregon counties voted to opt out of (i.e., prohibit) the state’s psilocybin services program. Some of the counties’ bans are temporary; others are permanent. Still, according to attorney Vince Sliwoski, individual cities in Oregon can circumvent their county’s ban by going in a different direction. In other words: If a county opted out of Measure 109 this past November, a city within that same county could have voted to allow psilocybin services. The reverse is also true (i.e., a city can opt out even if its county opted in.)

Vince Sliwoski in The Zoe Report

“Decriminalization is where a state [or municipality] says we are going to move this to a very low law enforcement priority status,” says Vince Sliwoski, Managing Partner at Harris Bricken LLP, a firm that specializes in controlled substances work. “It’s treated somewhere on the misdemeanor continuum, [meaning] you’ll get a citation that’s almost tantamount to getting a parking ticket. So you’re still doing something that breaks the law, but it’s no longer a criminal law.”