By Barine Majewska
May 21, 2026
Colorado has never been content to stand still when it comes to natural medicine. Having launched the country’s first state-regulated psychedelics program on January 1, 2025, the General Assembly is now training its sights on ibogaine through House Bill 26-1325.
Ibogaine is a powerful psychoactive compound derived from the Tabernanthe iboga plant that has shown unique promise in treating addiction and trauma. House Bill 26-1325 passed both chambers with overwhelming bipartisan support, and Governor Polis has indicated he will sign it. Colorado for Ibogaine led the drafting and advocacy effort, working with the Governor’s Office and Americans for Ibogaine, with meaningful contributions from the Healing Advocacy Fund and IMCF.
This bill is close to home for Vicente because founding partner Joshua Kappel served as interim Executive Director of Colorado for Ibogaine and was directly involved in drafting and shepherding the legislation through the General Assembly.
HB 26-1325 is the most significant expansion of Colorado’s natural medicine framework since the Natural Medicine Health Act first became law, and its arrival is timely. A recent federal executive order on psychedelic research enables Colorado to access federal research funding as it becomes available, which is relevant to the bill’s funding structure.
This post breaks down what HB 26-1325 does, what it means for the regulated program and where questions remain.
What Is Ibogaine and Why Does It Matter?
Ibogaine is not a new discovery. West and Central African communities have used the iboga plant in ceremony and healing for centuries. More recently, ibogaine has attracted serious scientific attention for its apparent ability to interrupt addiction, particularly opioid use disorder, in ways that conventional treatments have not. Clinical studies and anecdotal reports have described dramatic reductions in withdrawal symptoms and cravings following a single ibogaine session. Researchers have also documented promising results in treating PTSD, particularly in veterans with service-related trauma.
Ibogaine is not without risk. Unlike the other natural medicines under Colorado’s Natural Medicine Health Act, it carries significant cardiovascular concerns, which is precisely why advocates and regulators alike have called for medically supervised frameworks rather than unregulated access. That is exactly what HB 26-1325 sets out to build, albeit in stages.
The Ibogaine Research Pilot Program
The centerpiece of HB 26-1325 is the creation of an Ibogaine Research Pilot Program within the Behavioral Health Administration (BHA). The program is designed to generate the safety and efficacy data needed to eventually bring ibogaine into Colorado’s fully regulated natural medicine program. The inclusion of ibogaine into Colorado’s regulated natural medicine program is detailed in Part 4 of the bill and summarized below.
The BHA may select up to five ibogaine pilot sites through a competitive application process. A Pilot Proposal Review Committee will review applications and make recommendations, with the BHA notifying applicants of its decision within ninety days of the application deadline. Pilot sites may conduct their own research or join an existing IND. The BHA is also expressly authorized to coordinate with other states, federally recognized tribes, and the federal government including pursuing multi-state consortia for data sharing, funding, and regulatory best practices.
To be eligible, a pilot site must:
- Be federally lawful. The site must demonstrate intent to pursue federal authorization to study ibogaine’s safety and therapeutic effectiveness whether through an IND, Right-to-Try, waiver under Section 872(e) of the Controlled Substances Act or other applicable federal mechanism
- Establish a benefit-sharing plan with Indigenous communities traditionally connected to iboga.
The BHA will support pilot sites in completing or expanding an IND application with the FDA, may negotiate memoranda of understanding with federal agencies such as the DEA, HHS, and FDA, and is instructed to pursue federal research funding through ARPA-H and other federal sources.
Funding Triggers and the Federal Opportunity
The pilot program does not take effect automatically. It is contingent on the BHA receiving at least $150,000 in gifts, grants, or donations, or an equivalent in-kind value, before January 1, 2028. This amount is sized to fund at least one dedicated full-time equivalent (FTE) within the BHA, a position specifically tasked with pursuing additional federal and state grants.
The appropriations committee allowed the bill to move forward without a philanthropic commitment already in hand, on the premise that funding may come from the federal government, consistent with the recent executive order on psychedelic research. That context matters as this is not a bill relying solely on private charity. The federal landscape is moving, and Colorado is positioning itself to capture those dollars in support of this pilot program.
Once the initial threshold is met, the BHA has 365 days to raise funds sufficient to cover the full cost of operating the pilot for its entire duration. If full funding is not secured within that window, the pilot program is automatically repealed and donors receive their money back. There is no statutory backstop requiring legislative appropriation. Stakeholders invested in seeing this program succeed should begin cultivating funding relationships now and prioritize supporting BHA’s pursuit of federal grant opportunities.
Federal Approval Is a Hard Prerequisite
The operation of any ibogaine pilot site is expressly contingent on federal approval. Since ibogaine remains a Schedule I controlled substance, the program cannot operate without some form of federal authorization. The bill does not specify a particular pathway, allowing the BHA to choose the most practical option, whether it be IND, DEA research registration or the Right-to-Try framework. This flexibility may provide a short-term route for patient access while the larger regulatory systems are developed.
Retooling the Natural Medicine Advisory Board
Another portion of the bill focuses on revising the composition and appointment framework for the Natural Medicine Advisory Board. Rather than maintaining two distinct tiers of members consisting of eight with general expertise and seven with specialized experience, all fifteen voting members are now subject to a single, unified set of qualification criteria spanning a broad range of relevant fields from clinical medicine and pharmacology to Indigenous knowledge, veterans’ issues and criminal justice reform.
The board is also clarified as advisory, with no licensing, enforcement, rulemaking or operational authority, thereby resolving the ambiguity in the original statute.
Strengthening the Natural Medicine Program
A significant portion of the bill addresses practical improvements to Colorado’s existing natural medicine framework.
Prohibiting Disguised Sales While Protecting Community Healing
The bill tightens restrictions on unlicensed commercial activity involving natural medicine, explicitly prohibiting advertising of natural medicine or natural medicine products and closing loopholes that had allowed “harm reduction services” to serve as a vehicle for commercial sales, including retail storefronts, vendor tables, subscription arrangements, and online transactions.
Before HB 26-1325, the personal use definition contained language that bad actors were exploiting as a loophole where a person could pay for nominally legitimate harm reduction or support services, receive a quantity of natural medicine as part of that transaction, and walk out the door with doses of natural medicine they never intended to consume on the spot.
Under the language in the previous personal use definition, shared natural medicine did not need to be consumed during the service; it just needed to be shared concurrently with the service being provided. This allowed for sales of natural medicine under personal use, disguised as harm reduction or support services. Permitting sales of natural medicine under personal use was not intended under the original Senate Bill 23-290.
HB 26-1325 closes this door by replacing “used concurrently with the sharing of natural medicine” with ” used concurrently with the consumption of shared natural medicine” in the definition of personal use. Under the amended definition, remuneration for support or harm reduction services is only permissible when the natural medicine is actually consumed during the session, not handed off for later use.
If the psilocybin isn’t consumed in the room and with the support of the services provided, the transaction is no longer protected as personal use. Combined with the bill’s new explicit prohibitions on advertising discussed below, this amendment brings the personal use section back to its intended scope: genuine community healing rather than thinly veiled commercial distribution.
The bill also adds explicit prohibitions as standalone criminal/regulatory violations:
- Prohibitions on advertising natural medicine or natural medicine products
- Prohibitions on advertising harm reduction or support services offered for remuneration.
Prohibitions on advertising these services under personal use already existed as a condition of complying with personal use, but the new bill makes them standalone offenses. No changes to the requirement where participants must be informed that the provider of the services is not a licensed facilitator.
Reducing Regulatory Burden to Lower Licensing Costs, and Eventually, Participant Costs
The bill takes several steps to reduce the regulatory load on the state licensing authority, explicitly providing that routine, periodic or pre-operational inspections are not required as a condition of licensure unless expressly mandated by statute. The authority may also temporarily waive or adjust testing requirements when no licensed testing facility is available to conduct the required tests. This serves as a practical failsafe for an emerging market where testing infrastructure is still developing. These changes are designed to lower the cost of administering the program with the goal of making licensing more accessible and sustainable.
Removing the 5 License Restriction
The bill also removes a prior restriction that capped any individual’s financial interest in natural medicine business licenses at five. The five-license limit was creating a meaningful administrative burden considering regulators processing each new license application had to trace ownership structures and verify that no individual exceeded the cap, a time-consuming task that was slowing application approvals. By removing the cap, the bill eliminates that verification requirement entirely, reducing regulatory workload and ideally getting licenses into applicants’ hands faster.
The change is not expected to raise concerns about concentration of ownership. Consider that Oregon’s psilocybin program, which is now several years into operation, has seen nothing resembling a consolidation play; the market dynamics of regulated natural medicine have strongly favored independent, single-license operators rather than multi-license aggregators. Colorado is unlikely to be different, at least in the near term. The removal of this restriction is a practical solution to remove administrative friction. The hope is that this would lead to lower regulatory costs, allowing DOR to lower fees and, in turn, lower costs for participants.
Regulated Natural Medicine Sales License and 280E Flexibility Through a Multiple-Entity Structure
Earlier this year, DOR and DORA issued a bulletin taking the position that no sales of natural medicine were permitted at all under existing law, a clarification that created real confusion for healing centers that had been separately invoicing participants for natural medicine and natural medicine services as a matter of tax practice in the context of 280E.
The bill resolves that confusion by creating a new Limited Regulated Natural Medicine Sales License, which allows a licensed entity co-located with a healing center with common ownership to sell regulated natural medicine directly to participants for use during administration sessions. The new license creates a narrow, clearly defined pathway for separate natural medicine sales transactions, addressing both the regulatory uncertainty the bulletin created and the underlying tax structuring needs that drove the practice in the first place. Businesses considering this structure should consult with legal and tax counsel on implementation. The licensing requirements must be carefully satisfied, and the tax implications will depend on individual circumstances.
Temporary Event Licenses
Licensed healing centers may now apply for temporary premises permits to conduct administration sessions at locations separate from their licensed premises. Temporary premises need not be located in the same jurisdiction as the healing center’s primary location, providing flexibility for outreach, events, or underserved communities. However, temporary premises in different jurisdictions could still face local zoning conflicts. The bill prohibits the issuance of a permit when local zoning doesn’t allow the distribution of regulated natural medicine, but it doesn’t provide a proactive roadmap for navigating conflicting local regulations. Practitioners should conduct thorough zoning due diligence before applying.
Civil Liability Protections
HB 26-1325 establishes new civil malpractice liability protections at two levels. For the natural medicine program broadly, licensed facilitators are shielded from civil liability for physical or psychological injuries arising from the performance or supervision of natural medicine services, unless the injury resulted from intentional misconduct, gross negligence, or deviation from generally accepted standards of care. For the ibogaine pilot program specifically, the same protection extends to physicians and other healthcare professionals administering ibogaine at a pilot site.
These protections are sensible and should help attract qualified practitioners at both levels of the program; they do not insulate bad actors.
Enforcement: Cease-and-Desist Authority
HB 26-1325 also adds a practical new enforcement tool: the Natural Medicine Division director may issue cease-and-desist orders against persons operating without required licenses. Respondents have fourteen days to request a hearing, and judicial review is available under Colorado’s Administrative Procedure Act. This is a proportionate and appropriate addition to the regulatory framework.
Laying the Groundwork for Full Ibogaine Integration
HB 26-1325 is also notable for what it sets up for the future. The bill lays the statutory groundwork for fully adding ibogaine to the Natural Medicine Health Act, which could eventually allow for licensed ibogaine-based healing centers in Colorado.
Under the bill, regulators will have express authority to require:
- Medical prescreening, including electrocardiograms, blood tests, and genetic testing;
- Continuous medical monitoring during administration sessions;
- Appropriate oversight by trained medical professionals; and
- Extended integration or aftercare, which may include peer support specialists and mental health referrals.
The bill also expands the definition of “natural medicine” to conditionally include semi-synthetic ibogaine derived from Tabernanthe iboga or Voacanga africana plants, subject to board approval and authorization from the state licensing authority. This is a meaningful expansion, as current law treats synthetically derived compounds as categorically excluded from the natural medicine framework and allows for more sourcing options. The board is directed to prioritize consideration of ibogaine’s full inclusion.
Significantly, the state licensing authority’s duty to complete rulemaking and operationalize a full ibogaine program is contingent on adequate funding with approximately $750,000 to build out the full regulatory infrastructure. Unlike the pilot program, there is no statutory deadline, no automatic repeal and no precise mechanism to force the question. The path from pilot to full program integration could, in theory, be deferred indefinitely if funding does not materialize.
The bill envisions the pilot as an explicit on-ramp, as pilot site operators receive priority review when applying for future full-program licenses. But the timeline remains dependent on funding, federal authorization, and regulatory appetite, none of which are guaranteed.
Indigenous Benefit-Sharing: A National First
One of the most significant features of HB 26-1325 is its treatment of Indigenous communities’ relationship to iboga. This bill is the first state psychedelic legislation in the country to mandate benefit-sharing with Indigenous communities as a condition of participation in an ibogaine program.
Both pilot site applicants and future natural medicine licensees working with ibogaine are required to establish a benefit-sharing plan with Indigenous communities traditionally connected to the plant. These arrangements may include financial sharing, collaborative research, conservation support for iboga plant species and habitats, community-identified development priorities, and cultural or educational exchange. Licensees must maintain and make publicly available documentation of their consultation process and benefit-sharing arrangements. Sourcing documentation demonstrating ethical and sustainable cultivation practices is also required.
Critically, the bill states explicitly that nothing in these provisions requires Indigenous communities to disclose traditional knowledge, ceremonial practices, or cultural expressions. Indigenous communities are positioned as partners to be consulted and compensated, not as resources to be extracted. This reflects a growing acknowledgment that the commercialization of traditional plant medicine cannot be ethically divorced from the communities that have stewarded those plants for generations.
What This Means for Practitioners, Businesses, and Patients
HB 26-1325 is best understood as a bridge bill that establishes the research infrastructure needed to bring ibogaine into Colorado’s regulated ecosystem, while leaving the ultimate question of full program integration to future regulators, funding availability, and federal cooperation.
For practitioners and clinicians interested in ibogaine work, the pilot program is the most immediate opportunity. Preparing now, including selecting the federally approved research protocols under which they will operate, and developing rigorous screening protocols, informed consent frameworks, benefit-sharing plans, and sourcing documentation, will position prospective pilot sites for a strong application when the BHA opens the solicitation process.
For natural medicine businesses already operating in Colorado, the changes present new tools worth evaluating in consultation with legal and tax counsel and reflect consideration of the practical realities of the regulated program.
For patients and advocates, the bill represents genuine progress towards making the existing regulatory framework more efficient and opening the door to a fully regulated ibogaine program, but the road from pilot to full regulatory access remains contingent on funding, federal authorization and regulatory will. The timeline is uncertain, but the direction is clear. Colorado is building toward becoming the first state in the nation to offer safe, clinically rigorous and culturally responsible access to ibogaine treatment.
We are watching closely and working to help make it happen.
Barine Majewska is counsel in Vicente LLP’s Denver office and co-leads the firm’s Psychedelics and Emerging Therapies Practice Group. The content of this post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Viewing this page does not establish an attorney-client relationship. You should consult with a qualified legal professional for advice regarding any particular issue or problem. The contents of this page may be considered attorney advertising under certain rules of professional conduct.
