Washington

1. 1What the law is

Governor Inslee signed the psilocybin pilot and vetoed its machinery. What survived 2SSB 5263 on May 9, 2023 is a University of Washington therapy services pilot for first responders and veterans; the psilocybin advisory board and the Department of Health's rulemaking authority did not. The pilot depends on an appropriation and may only offer services through pathways the FDA has approved. Statewide, psilocybin and psilocyn are Schedule I under RCW 69.50.204, and knowing possession is a gross misdemeanor under RCW 69.50.4013. Five local jurisdictions have made enforcement their lowest priority, Seattle and Port Townsend in 2021, Jefferson County in 2023, Olympia in 2024 and Tacoma in 2025, but those resolutions bind nobody and change no law.

Washington occupies a middle position among US states: psilocybin remains prohibited under state law, but the state has enacted a narrow clinical pathway and several of its local governments have formally stepped back from enforcement. The enacted track is SB 5263, signed by Governor Jay Inslee on May 9, 2023, which created a state psilocybin task force and authorized a psilocybin therapy pilot program at the University of Washington serving military veterans and first responders. The pilot does not legalize psilocybin for the general public; possession, cultivation, and sale outside the program remain prohibited statewide. The second track is local. Beginning with Seattle in October 2021, then the largest US city to deprioritize psilocybin enforcement, a succession of jurisdictions have adopted resolutions making entheogen-related investigations and arrests their lowest law-enforcement priority: Port Townsend (2021), Jefferson County (2023), Olympia (2024), and Tacoma (2025). These resolutions are policy statements rather than changes to criminal law; state statutes continue to apply within those jurisdictions. Together the two tracks define Washington's current posture: a tightly scoped clinical pilot at the state level, and spreading enforcement discretion at the local level.

Washington's approach contrasts with Oregon's next door, where voters approved a regulated psilocybin services program by ballot initiative in 2020. Washington's legislature has instead moved incrementally, from a task force and clinical pilot in 2023 toward broader access bills that have so far stalled. The most recent, SB 5921, the Washington Medical Psilocybin Act, cleared the Senate Health and Long-Term Care Committee on February 3, 2026, but stalled in Ways and Means past the fiscal cutoff and is dead for the 2026 session. Supporters would need to reintroduce the measure in 2027; in the near term, movement is more likely to continue through local deprioritization resolutions than through state law.