Ryan Sabalow, CalMatters

How psychedelic drug therapy became a rare bipartisan issue in California

This story was originally published by CalMatters, nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

Assemblymember Marie Waldron is a Republican from San Diego who was the GOP caucus leader for three years at a time when California’s Democrats were waging a legislative war with Donald Trump.

San Francisco Sen. Scott Wiener is a Democratic rising star who’s considered a leading candidate to replace one of the right’s biggest villains, U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, should the former House speaker retire from Congress.

The pair may not seem to have much in common, but they have formed an unlikely bipartisan partnership on an unusual issue: legalizing psychedelic drugs to treat mental illness.

Waldron has appeared twice beside Wiener in recent weeks. Most recently, they addressed reporters at a press conference to announce a new bill they coauthored that would allow adults 21 and older to use psilocybin mushrooms, MDMA, DMT and mescaline under the supervision of a licensed and trained facilitator.

And, in January, they sat side-by-side before the Assembly Health Committee to advocate for Waldron’s bill which would convene a workgroup to study psychedelic-assisted therapy with the goal of making recommendations for regulating treatment by Jan. 1, 2026. Waldron’s Assembly Bill 941 advanced without opposition through the Assembly and will be taken up by the Senate this year.

Both pieces of legislation are in response to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s October veto of Wiener’s bill that would have decriminalized the use of plant-based hallucinogenic drugs. Waldron along with fellow Republicans Heath Flora of Ripon and Bill Essayli of Corona last year cast “yes” votes to advance the measure out of the Assembly prior to Newsom’s veto.

In his veto message, Newsom said, “This is an exciting frontier and California will be on the front-end of leading it.” First, however, he asked legislators to draft another bill with “regulated treatment guidelines” that included dosing information and rules to prevent patients from being exploited and ensure patients with psychoses wouldn’t be harmed.

“We’re grateful that the governor didn’t simply say ‘no,’ but indicated what he would say yes to, which was a therapeutic-focused bill.” Wiener told the health committee.

Wiener, Waldron are unlikely partners

It may not come as a surprise that Wiener would advocate for legalizing psychedelics. After all, he represents San Francisco, a city known for its liberal politics, with a reputation for embracing hallucinogenic drugs dates to the 1960s. Their most famous champion, Timothy Leary, in 1967 told 30,000 hippies in the city’s Golden Gate Park to “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out.” The gathering called the “Human Be-In” was held in response to California banning LSD the year prior. Leary’s remarks became an instant counterculture slogan. The federal government banned possessing psychedelics the following year.

Wiener told the health committee that the state and federal decisions 50 years ago to shut down research into psychedelic drugs were a mistake. Therapists “working in the shadows” have amassed evidence that the drugs can save the lives of those suffering from trauma, he said.

“We want to make sure that our folks, including our first responders who are suffering, have access – not in the shadows but in the sunlight – to therapies that … (are) literally saving people’s lives and stopping them from killing themselves,” Wiener told the health committee.

State Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat, addresses lawmakers on the first day of session in the California Senate, on Jan. 3, 2024. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMatters Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMatters

It’s perhaps more surprising that Waldron has taken on the issue. She represents a safe Republican district in San Diego, in a region known for its straight-laced, military presence. San Diego County is the home to the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet, tens of thousands of Marines and seven military bases.

In an interview with CalMatters, Waldron said it was actually military veterans who brought psychedelics to her attention.

On Veteran’s Day 2021, Waldron attended a fundraiser for a veteran’s group at the Hotel Del Coronado resort on the edge of the San Diego Bay. There, she heard from a group of Navy SEALs who described crippling PTSD and depression when they came back from combat. Psychedelics, Waldron said, helped them cope with their trauma.

“They were saying … how it changed their life and actually ended their desire to commit suicide, restored their family,” Waldron said. “They had a normal life; they didn’t have the triggers that brought on PTSD.”

Psychedelics in therapeutic settings, Waldron said, take a person’s mind “back to the scene of the trauma” and “actually break the trauma in a way.”

“When you come out the other end,” Waldron said, “you’re able to deal with it.”

She notes that she’s hardly the first Republican to embrace the therapies. Republican U.S. Reps. Dan Crenshaw, the eye-patch-wearing Navy SEAL veteran from Texas, and Matt Gaetz, the conservative firebrand from Florida, have supported the use of psychedelics. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed a bill in 2021 to study the drugs’ therapeutic benefits.

Waldron a Republican 'outlier'

Waldron’s bill may have advanced to the Senate without a single vote against it, thanks in part to Wiener’s support. But at least one Democrat had reservations. Assemblymember Akilah Weber, a physician from La Mesa, abstained from voting.

At the health committee hearing last month, she peppered Waldron and Wiener with questions and appeared skeptical there was enough legitimate medical research for California to craft a set of therapeutic guidelines by 2026. She noted the federal government only recently approved clinical research.

“What kind of studies are they going to be evaluating, especially given the fact that the regulations or the guidelines of how these clinical trials should be done just came out in June of 2023?” Weber asked.

Wiener countered that research is underway and available.

“There are already a number of peer-reviewed studies in places like the New England Journal of Medicine,” Wiener said. “So I don’t want anyone to walk away thinking there are no scientific peer-reviewed studies. There are.”

None of Waldron’s 17 Republican colleagues voted against Waldron’s bill when it was on the Assembly floor, though 12 abstained or were absent. The Republicans might not have wanted to go on record opposing a bill championed by their former leader. Some Republicans may also fear the vote could be used against them in a campaign.

Waldron doesn’t have to worry about what a challenger might say, since she’s serving her final term in the Legislature due to term limits.

Nonetheless, she said she would have worked with Wiener on the issue of psychedelics even if she was up for reelection. She notes she was a coauthor with Wiener on mental-health legislation that passed in 2020, and she fought for legislation that provides prison inmates with state Medi-Cal services in the months before their release in the hopes they transition easier into drug treatment when they re-enter society.

“It makes me kind of an outlier in many ways on the Republican side of things,” Waldron said of wanting to help inmates. “But I’ve always tried to figure out how to help people when they come home to be able to stay home and not … go back to prison.”

Parents’ rights groups mobilize as California advances a ban on youth tackle football

This story was originally published by CalMatters, nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

Anaheim, Calif., Assemblymember Avelino Valencia is a former tight end for Cal State San Jose who tried out for the NFL. Before entering politics, he was a community college football coach.

“The benefit that football has had in particular to my life, I cannot put a monetary amount on it,” he told his colleagues on the Assembly Arts, Entertainment, Sports and Tourism Committee.

So it was painful for Valencia to throw his support behind a bill headed for the Assembly floor that would make California the first state to set a minimum age for tackle football — banning the sport for children under 12. But he said the evidence that the repeated brain trauma football players endure game after game is too clear.

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“It’s because it is a very dangerous and violent sport,” he said, his broad shoulders filling his suit jacket like a set of football pads. “There’s no ifs, ands or buts about that.”

The committee’s 5-2 party-line vote from Valencia and his fellow Democrats last week to advance the bill set in motion what’s likely to be one of the more emotionally charged issues California lawmakers will consider in 2024 as they wade into yet another contentious debate over parental rights.

This time, instead of vaccine requirements or LGBTQ policies at public schools, they’re debating the future of the country’s most popular sport, one that has a documented history of its players getting debilitating brain disease from repeated blows to the head. Several high-profile examples of former players – most notably the suicide of legendary NFL linebacker Junior Seau who suffered from a degenerative brain disease – have prompted the NFL down to youth leagues to try to make tackling safer.

Researchers say tackle football is still dangerous despite the changes to the game. For instance, Boston University published research last year finding that players who’ve spent more than 11 years in the sport have an increased likelihood of brain trauma, leading to poor impulse control and thinking problems.

But there’s no guarantee Sacramento Democratic Assemblymember Kevin McCarty’s bill will advance beyond the Assembly, even in a Legislature that’s not shy about citing medical research to make decisions that outrage parental-rights groups and become “nanny state” fodder for national conservative media.

Assembly Bill 734 would phase in a ban, first prohibiting children under 6 from playing tackle football starting in 2025, and working up to bar those younger than 12 by 2029. It must pass on the Assembly floor by the end of the month if it’s going to eventually make its way through the state Senate to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk. Newsom hasn’t indicated whether he’d sign the bill.

A handful of other state legislatures have debated similar youth tackle football bans. None have passed. A similar version of the bill in 2018 failed in California to even get out of committee.

Along the way, lawmakers are sure to see a repeat of last week’s hearing. Dozens of coaches, youth sports association officials, jersey-clad pre-teen football players and their parents spilled out of the hearing room into the hallway as they lined up to take the microphone and urge the committee to kill the measure.

The groups, including the California coalition of Save Youth Football, whose private Facebook group has nearly 7,000 members, have promised to keep up the pressure.

Already, the issue has taken on a partisan tone. A representative for Moms for Liberty, an influential group among conservatives known for seeking to ban textbooks that reference gender identity and academic discussions about systemic racism, was among those who testified in opposition last week.

“Huddle up California. Protect your parental rights. Stand up to Big Government,” the California Youth Football Alliance wrote on its Facebook page earlier this month, urging followers to contact McCarty’s office.

Youth tackle football fans cite race, community ties

But youth tackle football is different from other parental-rights debates that are more easily framed as a Republican-Democrat dichotomy.

As they weigh the bill, liberal lawmakers will consider arguments from the likes of Sacramento County Sheriff Jim Cooper, who opposes it.

Cooper, a Black former Democratic Assemblymember from Elk Grove, worries that banning youth tackle football would take away an outlet for young children in Black communities who might otherwise find their way into a gang.

“Notably, Black male children engage in youth tackle football at higher rates than any other race,” Cooper told the committee last week in his sheriff’s uniform. “To my knowledge, there’s been no pressure to limit participation in lacrosse, soccer or ice hockey, which all have concussion rates similar to youth tackle football but are prevalent in more affluent and exclusive communities.”

Lawmakers, he said, have already passed legislation he authored in 2019 that limited full-contact youth football practices to no more than 30 minutes per day, two days a week. That bill had support from the California Youth Football Alliance.

Lawmakers also will have to weigh their own experiences with the sport. Assemblymember Tom Lackey, one of the Republicans on the sports and tourism committee, told his colleagues last week that he’s “participated in flag football and … participated in tackle football. They’re different.”

“If we ban this sport, we take away the opportunity and many opportunities from children to grow – not only as an athlete – but as a self-actualized adult who knows when they have the capabilities to overcome an obstacle and achieve success further,” said Lackey, a former California Highway Patrol sergeant from Palmdale. “We take away a lifelong passion for the love of the game.”

Experts warn of dangers from tackling

McCarty, the bill’s author and a former Pop Warner youth football player himself, said wanting to restrict young kids from tackling each other won’t negate their love for football, a sport that he said has been part of his family for as long as he can remember.

“You can love football and love our kids and try to protect our kids at the same time,” he told the committee, after pulling out a ball with a 49ers logo.

The experts McCarty brought in to testify in support of his bill included pediatric neurologist Dr. Stella Legarda, president of the California Neurology Society, which sponsored the bill. The group spent $17,983 on lobbying last year on this bill and others, according to the latest reports filed with the California Secretary of State.

She pointed out that the NFL has been having its own players shed their pads and helmets to play flag football in its signature exhibition game, the Pro Bowl.

“When the NFL takes measures to protect its players by playing flag football in the Pro Bowl, it is not just safeguarding its multimillion investments,” Legarda told the committee. “It delivers the clear message that impact injuries and cumulative head trauma are perilous and should be minimized.”

Assemblymember Valencia, the former football player, told CalMatters in an interview that the bill and the concerns about the health of California’s youth football players were very much on his mind last year, as he stood on the sidelines of his alma mater, San Jose State, during its game with its rival, Cal State Fresno.

He said he was struck by “how violent and damaging” the sport he played is. He couldn’t imagine taking those sorts of hits at the speeds the players were moving, now, as a 35-year-old man.

Valencia said that young kids can play flag football and still learn the skills they’ll need to play tackle football when they’re older – without risking brain damage.

“Drills, becoming more athletic, agility, speed, that makes you a better football player,” he said. “But tackling? That comes second hand. You can figure that out in a very short period of time.”