The Oregon Health Authority issued the first licenses for manufacturers of psychedelic mushrooms this week. The first went to Satori Farms PDX on Wednesday and the second, on Thursday, to Satya Therapeutics.These licenses are the next step in a program that the state has been building from the ground up since voters passed a framework for legal psilocybin use in the state in 2020. Earlier this month, students began to graduate from psilocybin facilitator programs.
Oregon’s psilocybin law allows people to take the substance created by a licensed facility in a licensed service center, under the watch of a licensed facilitator.
So far the Oregon Health Authority has not licensed any service centers, facilitators or any of the laboratories that will be required to test the substance. But, those are expected soon.
“We expect to be licensing a laboratory, service center, and facilitators in the coming weeks,” Oregon Psilocybin Services Section manager Angie Allbee said Thursday.
They also expect to issue more manufacturer licenses, she added.
In a statement, Allbee congratulated Tori Armbrust, the owner of Satori Farms PDX “for being issued the first psilocybin license in Oregon’s history and for representing women leading the way for the emerging psilocybin ecosystem.”
“We are committed to fostering an inclusive partnership with our regulated community to ensure safe, effective and equitable psilocybin services throughout the state,” Allbee added.
Tori ArmbrustArmbrust said Thursday that her facility in Southeast Portland was about 1,000 square feet.At the moment, she is the only person employed by the company, and, she said, she plans to keep it that way for a while.Unlike cannabis production, psilocybin has a relatively small footprint and a shorter growing cycle.“From start to finish the process takes about one and a half months,” Armbrust said.Satya Therapeutics in Medford is similarly sized. Owner Andreas Met is the sole employee of the company.“We are in a 100-plus-year-old barn,” he said, “about 4,000 square feet.”But, he noted, “the ‘licensed premises’ makes up 1,200 square feet of this barn.”After the mushrooms are harvested, they are dried. Then, they will need to be tested by a third-party lab. For now, both Satori and Satya will only be selling dried mushrooms. In the future, Satya also plans to make gummies and chocolates.Met said it was still unclear how big the industry would get, but he expected it to be smaller than cannabis, where he said, “I started a company from scratch and ended up employing over 100 employees.”