Another Michigan City Passes Psychedelics Resolution Directing Police To Deprioritize Enforcement
Jackson Michigan psychedelics resolution, as real as steel and diner coffee, makes enforcement the lowest priority
Jackson, Michigan doesn’t scream revolution. It’s a railroad town with a long memory and a short fuse. But on Tuesday night, the city council lit a small, deliberate fuse of its own: the Jackson Michigan psychedelics resolution, a policy calling on police to deprioritize laws against the purchase, cultivation, and possession of certain entheogenic plants and fungi. Think psilocybin, ayahuasca, peyote—the old-world pharmacopeia we inherited from elders who knew something about pain, healing, and the long road in between. The vote was 4–2, and the roar in the room said what the roll call already did: people are tired of punishing desperate neighbors for trying to get well. Council Member Will Forgrave made it plain—and personal—when he said these treatments helped his wife crawl out of postpartum depression’s undertow. “It saved her life,” he told the chamber, voice steady, eyes tired. That line hung in the air like the smell of rain before it breaks. This is what cannabis taxation, marijuana policy reform, and now entheogen decriminalization all share when they finally hit the street: the cold, human math of what actually works.
The policy’s bones: clear lines, local control, fewer handcuffs
Jackson joins Ann Arbor, Detroit, Hazel Park, Ferndale, Ypsilanti, and Washtenaw County in taking the psychedelic heat off the front burner. The new resolution urges the county prosecutor to stop chasing these cases and tells police to focus elsewhere. But it’s not a free-for-all. The rules still bite where they should: no use by minors, no entheogens on school property, and nothing behind the wheel. These aren’t grey-area suggestions; they’re hard edges designed to keep the experiment sober, sensible, and defensible. You can read the actual language yourself—plain and bureaucratic, the way good guardrails should be—in the city’s posted resolution. Not everyone was convinced. Council Members Arlene Robinson and Freddie Dancy voted no, with Dancy citing “personal convictions,” the kind that can be immovable boulders or movable feast, depending on the month and the headlines. Still, a majority said yes. That’s how momentum announces itself in the Midwest: with a practical shrug and a changed policy.
Three years, countless conversations, and a playbook written in patience
How do you flip a city’s stance without setting the place on fire? You do it the slow way—by knocking on doors, showing your face, and answering the same wary questions with the same unglamorous facts. The co-founders of Decriminalize Nature Jackson—Alina DeRossett, Roger Maufort, and Kate Brown—described the recipe as education, hard work, and a drumbeat of diligence over three years. A lot of coffee. A lot of calendar invites. A lot of meetings where nobody’s mind changes until it quietly does. Julie Barron of the Michigan Psychedelic Society put it bluntly: even smaller towns—places where reputations are born in church basements and high school gyms—are ready to push the needle when it’s clearly about helping neighbors heal. That message landed. Hard. Because beneath the arguments about jurisdiction and substance schedules and who gets to say “medicine,” there’s a simpler truth: people want practical outcomes. Less misery. Fewer families shattered by untreated depression, PTSD, or the complicated interior storms we all carry. If a mushroom or a vine offers relief where a pharmacy label failed, most folks don’t reach for a penal code. They reach for hope.
From Jackson to Lansing to D.C.: the broader map is changing—messy, loud, and fast
Local reforms like Jackson’s don’t exist in a vacuum. They sand the edges, make space, and pressure the next ring out. In Lansing, Rep. Mike McFall’s House Bill 4686 would decriminalize up to two ounces of psilocybin for adults with a medical record indicating PTSD. It hasn’t broken through yet. Money, staffing, and time—the unsexy triumvirate—still rule statewide campaigns. But the direction of travel is set. And nationally, cannabis reform keeps nudging the door wider, even as culture wars try to slam it shut. The White House hinting at schedule changes for marijuana became a parlor game in its own right—see White House Confirms Trump Will ‘Address Marijuana Rescheduling’ Thursday, But Reported Details On Final Decision Are ‘Speculation’—and public opinion is a pendulum that keeps settling closer to normalization than panic, even if partisan pockets resist, as in Most Americans Back Legalizing Marijuana, But Trump Voters Not On Board, Conservative Group’s Poll Shows Amid Rescheduling Rumors. On the ground, you see policy chisels at the margins, like New Congressional Bill Would Let People Use Marijuana In Public Housing Without Being Evicted, while skeptics sharpen their knives with cost concerns, as in GOP Senator Wants Feds To Study Hospital Costs Caused By Marijuana Use. Psychedelics are threading a similar needle, with a twist: the science on trauma and end-of-life anxiety is promising, and the cultural baggage is different. The movement, as one organizer said, “transcends politics.” In practice, that looks like coalitions you wouldn’t expect sharing coffee and testimony, and walking out with a plan.
What “lowest priority” really means: fewer arrests, clearer boundaries, and a little more room to breathe
When a city knocks enforcement down the list, it’s not a magic spell. It’s triage. Police stop chasing low-level cases. Prosecutors stop stacking charges that box people into plea deals and worse. Public health workers—and family members—get a little more sunlight to do their jobs. The policy still draws lines around kids, schools, and cars, because good fences keep experiments honest. And if the future follows the same rhythm we’ve seen in cannabis policy, we’ll watch local successes stack into regional norms, then statewide frameworks that are harder to undo than a talking point. For now, Jackson stands on the leading edge of a Michigan psychedelics decriminalization story writing itself one city at a time, propelled by neighbors who are done confusing punishment with safety and enforcement with care. The mayor said he was happy to have “freed the mushrooms.” That’s a line, sure. But it’s also a promise to take healing seriously—even when it looks unfamiliar—and to keep rewriting the rules so people can get help without fear; if you’re exploring compliant options in the legal hemp space, take a look at our shop here: https://thcaorder.com/shop/.
