HB 727 with Gina Giorgio

How does psychedelic legislation get drafted and introduced to regulators?

What kind of team should one have in place when they meet with lawmakers to discuss psychedelic research?

And how does one get started in the field of psychedelics in the first place?

These are questions that Gina Giorgio can answer as well as anyone in the United States.

Gina and her team at the North Carolina Psychedelic Policy Coalition successfully introduced House Bill 727, which would fund the study of MDMA to treat PTSD and psilocybin for depression or anxiety.

On today’s episode of Mycopreneur Podcast, Gina gives her first ever podcast interview and walks us through the process of drafting and introducing HB727.

We trace her trajectory from college student aspiring to work in the field of psychedelics to psychedelic policy and advocacy professional at the vanguard of legislative change in North Carolina and beyond.

Gina also shares with us her perspectives on educating and connecting the next generation of psychedelic professionals through her work with Students for Sensible Drug Policy, where she heads up the Psychedelic Pipeline Program that fosters opportunities for young people who want to work professionally within the field of psychedelics.

“I was seeing all the psychedelic policy reform efforts in other states and started thinking: Why not North Carolina? And so the original idea came to me January of 2022. I had seen the develop developments in other places and saw nothing was going on here in North Carolina. So I thought, how can we start this? I approached some people from SSDP and Jeremy Sharp, who's the Southeast outreach coordinator, took me up on the idea.

I think it's a really good way to start educating the public and legislators about the whole gamut of psychedelics, because it's obviously much more vast than just the research. But that's the tip of the iceberg we can start with. And so at that time, I was 24 and I had no policy experience or knowledge.

So even the most basic political terms I didn't know of, I'd have to research as we go. And so we started at a complete grassroots level. Jeremy and I just reached out to anyone we could find in North Carolina that worked in the field of psychedelics; people at Duke University, Chapel Hill, the Pearl Psychedelic Institute in Waynesville, North Carolina, which is a MAPS expanded access study site.

So it started with a year of coalition building going to Raleigh to go into legislators offices and talk about psychedelic research, which is always interesting to do because a lot of people have never heard about it. So you go in and they're like, ‘I don't even know what that means.’”

Gina shares with us the full experience of drafting and introducing House Bill 727 from scratch with no prior political experience, and is a testament to successful grassroots policy reform and advocacy work in the field of psychedelics.

It was a pleasure to host her on the podcast, and I hope for a future where more brilliant young minds are inspired to forge a path ahead for a more sensible drug policy where none currently exists.

Kudos Gina, and thanks for dropping by the Mycopreneur Podcast.