Oregon dropped its proposed psilocybin fee increase, and its own forecast for that path leaves the programme $3.9 million short by June 2027.

Fees and tax have fallen short of spending since licensing began in 2023. In the two years of 2023-25 they brought in $2,332,202 against $5,467,243 spent, and $3,139,672 of General Fund money closed the gap.

In 2021-23, a start-up period in which licence applications opened only in January 2023, the General Fund line was $5,863,132. Of that, $3,092,885 went unspent and, in the words of the overview and the August summary, “was unable to be carried over”.

The authority’s budget request for 2027-29 (opens in new tab) puts the end of General Fund support in one line: the programme “fully transitioned to Other Funds in the 2025-27 biennium”, Other Funds being, in this budget, its own fee and tax revenue. Oregon’s entry records that the authority’s rulemaking notice of 28 August said the ballot measure anticipated a programme that would pay for itself, and that it currently does not.

After staff, the largest line is cost allocation. The August summary (opens in new tab) lists it among its 2025-27 cost drivers as “direct and indirect costs, comprising 25% of the OPS budget”.

In the October overview’s (opens in new tab) account, fees have fallen short because the industry “is still growing”, local ordinances and zoning keep some applicants from finding property, and licensees “face high costs related to insurance, banking, tax filing, and other constraints.”

The overview’s list of unanticipated cost increases in 2023-25 adds data and reporting work (a 2023 law required it without new money), legal counsel, cost-of-living raises, state agency and infrastructure charges, laboratory accreditation and product testing contracts, and advisory board pay that “will require more budget funds”.

The programme has cut its positions from 23 full-time equivalents to 17, which the August summary calls “the minimal number of positions to implement ORS 475A.”

The August summary priced three versions of the 2025-27 budget, each with the same spending and no General Fund money. Its first scenario assumes no fee increase, the decision the authority has since made, and ends June 2027 an estimated $3,886,443 short.

The increase would have narrowed the shortfall if licensees had stayed, and widened it under the authority’s expected loss. The second scenario, the only one in which it helps, assumes current licence trends, “not considering expected loss of revenue/licensee attrition due to fee increases”.

The third builds in an expected loss that, the summary says, was “calculated with an assumed worst-case scenario of 60% reduction with additional consideration for those currently eligible for reduced fees, other changes in process and historical attrition trends”. The summary does not say what the 60% is a reduction of. The third ends further short than no increase at all.

The overview concludes that “increasing licensing fees may be counterproductive, pricing out licensees and resulting in fewer licensees, significant decreases in revenue, and increased need for GF support.” The rules advisory committees’ feedback, the August summary records, was “unanimously opposed to fee increases.”

The documents name what the programme would depend on, and commit to none of it. “Absent a significant increase in licensees and statutory changes,” the overview says, “sustainability of the program continuing to meet statutory requirements would be dependent on other revenue streams, such as General Fund, or additional solutions, such as creation of new revenue streams.”

The August summary expects the 1 September merger with the medical marijuana programme to “result initially in some small cost savings though the overall budget shortfall will not be significantly reduced”. The overview says the programme is working with its advisory board “on recommendations for program sustainability”, though the August summary records that the board passed none by its 1 May deadline “due to quorum issues”.

The documents also do not reconcile the money carried between periods, and do not say why. The August summary says its revenue forecast “includes carryover for 2025-27 of $2,315,485.”

The sheet’s balance lines are $3,092,885 for 2021-23 and $4,631 for 2023-25. The first is the unspent General Fund money that could not be carried over. That leaves $4,631 on the sheet’s own figures, against the $2,315,485 the forecast carries in. The forecast counts that carryover as revenue, so any part of it that is not there would add the same amount to the June 2027 shortfall.

The authority’s licensing dashboard (opens in new tab) gives counts for three dates, one before the committees met, one after the proposal was filed and one after it was dropped.

The August summary’s licence table is a separate count from the dashboard’s. It is dated 23 July 2026, after the rules advisory committees met about the proposal on 6 and 9 July. On that day 379 facilitators, 20 service centres, 7 manufacturers and 1 laboratory held licences, in the table’s words “Approved as of July 23, 2026”. The summary’s own text treats them as licences held: its account of the committees’ objections refers to “the 379+ currently licensed” facilitators and “the 28+ small businesses that operate under Oregon’s model”.

The table’s other column, “All-Time Totals”, gives 641 for facilitators, 39 for service centres, 19 for manufacturers and 2 for laboratories since 1 January 2023, without defining the column. The dashboard, a separate report, says that in its own counts a licensee who lets a licence lapse and is later licensed again “may be represented as two separate licenses”.

The summary’s own sentence on the period since the first licence was issued, in March 2023, is that “over 33% of service centers have either surrendered or not renewed their licenses”, beside “a steady increase in facilitator license applications” since HB 2387, a 2025 law for facilitators who also hold certain other Oregon health licences.

Oregon’s entry carries a different kind of figure, from the authority’s 2025 year-end summary (opens in new tab): 377 facilitator, 25 service centre, 11 manufacturer and 1 laboratory licences approved during 2025. That is a flow, the approvals granted over a year. The July table and the dashboard count a stock, the licences held on one day, and a flow cannot be subtracted from a stock. We printed the 377 and the 25 as a year-end roster until 5 September, and corrected the entry.

On 20 October the dashboard still showed one approved laboratory licence. The August summary records an objection from committee members about the laboratory: “The laboratory will not renew its license, leaving no option for product testing under the model.” It does not say which member said so.

Oregon’s entry records that, under the proposal, the laboratory licence fee would have stayed at $10,000 until 2029 and its application fee would have risen from $500 to $1,000. The objection was made about fees that will not take effect.

Service centres had sold 46,273 psilocybin products by 23 July 2026, the August summary says, and the October overview puts the total at “over 50,000” by 1 October, adding that the number “may include the sale of secondary doses”. Both figures count products sold, and of people the overview says only that “thousands of clients have been served”.

The gap behind the shortfall is older than the fee decision. Since licensing began, fees and tax have fallen short of spending; what changed in 2025-27 is that the General Fund stopped closing the gap, and the fee decision left it open.

The forecast’s spending side is a reason to hold the June 2027 figure loosely. It has the programme spending $4,706,031 in the year to June 2027, $886,412 more than the year before, and $500,866 of the rise is cost allocation.

The sheet puts cost allocation at $373,393 for the two years of 2023-25 and $924,567 for the one year to June 2026. The forecast’s two-year totals for cost allocation are round sums, $600,000 direct and $1,750,000 indirect, and the second-year forecasts are what is left of them after the first year’s cost allocation. The documents do not say how the round sums were set or whether the way cost allocation is calculated changed.

The case for a fee increase rests on the second scenario, in which licence trends hold; there the increase would have cut the shortfall by $933,650. The documents price nothing between the second and third scenarios, so “may be counterproductive” is the authority’s judgement about which is likelier.

None of the authority’s budget documents says the programme will stop. ORS 475A still directs the authority to license and regulate psilocybin services, and new rules are planned to take effect on 15 January 2027.