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Psychedelic State(s) of America
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Legal Terms Glossary

Psychedelic State(s) of America — Global Cannabis, Kratom, 7-OH, & Psychedelic Policy Tracker. Plant, fungi, and drug law and policy reform across the United States and around the world, all tracked in one place.

The short words on our maps carry long legal meanings. Here is what each status says about a place's law — and what it does not say.

The three terms people ask about most

Regulated framework

Legal, but only inside a programme the government set up — not on the open market.

A law says people may obtain or use a substance lawfully, but only on conditions the law itself writes down: who may supply it, where, in what form, and sometimes who may receive it. A state psilocybin-services programme, where sessions happen at a licensed service centre with a trained monitor, is the clearest example. So is a national rule that permits a substance for religious use by a registered community.

The activity is lawful inside the lane the law draws. Step outside it — buy from an unlicensed seller, use a preparation the programme does not cover, take it home instead of using it on site — and the protection does not apply.

We record a status here only when the official text actually creates that channel. A statement of enforcement priorities, or a city resolution asking police not to arrest people, is logged as decriminalization instead, because neither licenses anyone to sell.

Don't confuse it with: Not the same as “Legal, including sales”. A regulated framework normally has no ordinary shop counter. If you are deciding what you may buy, the licence rules in the law matter more than the headline word “legal”.

Medical only

Allowed only for medical or prescribed use.

A health law or patient programme lets people access a substance with a clinician's authorisation — a prescription, a doctor's recommendation, or enrolment in a state or national programme. The gate is medical: a patient with the right paperwork, from a licensed prescriber, usually at a licensed dispensary.

Everything outside that channel is still illegal. Growing your own, buying without authorisation, or using someone else's recommendation is not covered, and the penalties in the criminal law still apply to it.

Where a place also allows non-medical supervised use, we record the wider status instead, so the map shows the most permissive channel the law actually opens.

Don't confuse it with: Not decriminalization: someone without a clinician's authorisation has no protection from arrest. Not a regulated framework either — the gate here is a doctor, not a licence to supply or use more broadly.

No record yet

We have not found and reviewed an official source for this place and substance, so the map leaves it uncoloured.

A blank square is a statement about our evidence, not about the law. It means no reviewed entry from a government or other official source has been logged for that place and that substance. It never means legal, never means banned, and never means “no law exists”.

Blanks happen for honest reasons: the country publishes its laws in a form we have not yet verified, the rule sits inside a general criminal or penal code we have not yet pulled apart for that substance, or the place is covered by a wider national or state law that we describe in the record we do hold rather than colouring a map from an assumption.

Every blank we can fill comes from opening an official page, reading what it says about that substance, and having an editor approve the entry. Where we could not verify national coverage, we leave the square neutral and say so, rather than guess a colour.

Don't confuse it with: Do not read blank as permission. If you need to know what is lawful where you are, open the place's own record or the official source behind it — a research gap is not a legal finding, and it is not advice.

The rest of the map legend

These are the same words the maps and timelines use, drawn from the tracker's own status list so this page can never drift from the legend.

  • Legal, including sales

    Can be bought legally from shops or licensed sellers.

    On the map: Solid

  • Not criminalized, no legal sales

    Having or growing it isn't a crime, but selling is illegal or there's no legal market. Includes unlisted or gray-area cases.

    On the map: Rings

  • Decriminalized

    Still illegal, but personal use brings a fine or no penalty instead of a crime.

    On the map: Dots

  • Research or task force only

    The government funds research, runs a pilot or task force, or authorises clinical trials, but people have no legal access.

    On the map: Small squares

  • Pending bill

    A bill to change the law is under consideration.

    On the map: Vertical lines

  • Prohibited

    Illegal to possess, use or sell.

    On the map: Horizontal lines

  • No record yet

    No reviewed official source for this place and substance. Read it as “we have not verified this”, never as legal or illegal.

    On the map: left uncoloured

Words people mix up

Decriminalized vs. legal
Decriminalized still means the substance is illegal. What changed is the penalty: personal amounts bring a fine or a warning instead of a criminal charge, the way a traffic ticket works. Selling and growing usually stay crimes. “Legal” means the law allows it.
Not criminalized, no legal sales
Having or growing a plant for your own use is not a crime, but there is no lawful way to buy it — because the law never built a market. This is the status most often mistaken for full legalization.
Medical only vs. regulated framework
Both are conditional. In medical only, the condition is a clinician's authorisation and a patient status. In a regulated framework, the condition is a licence, a supervised site or a named community, and the use does not have to be medical.
Whole-leaf kratom vs. 7-OH
These are tracked as separate questions. A rule that restricts 7-hydroxymitragynine, the concentrated alkaloid, does not by itself ban or allow the leaf. A state that regulates the leaf has not necessarily said anything about 7-OH, and our maps keep the two records apart so one is never coloured by the other.
National, state and city status
Each level keeps its own record. A city that decriminalizes does not change its state's law, and a state law can override a city's. Subnational entries on a country's page are labelled with the place they belong to, so a local rule never reads as the national position.
Pending bill vs. enacted law
A bill is a proposal. It only sets a status once it is signed into law, and we date that from the official record. Bills that die, are superseded or stall stay in the Bill Tracker with that outcome recorded, so an old proposal is never mistaken for a rule in force.
Research or task force only
The government funds studies, runs a pilot, or authorises clinical trials, but people still have no lawful way to obtain the substance. A trial is not access.

How a status gets on the map

  1. One official source per entry — the text of the law, a statute page, a regulator or legislature notice — linked from the record itself.
  2. An editor reviews and approves it before it can colour a map. Automation proposes; it does not publish.
  3. Dates come from the official record, at the precision that record gives: a day, a month or a year.
  4. A status is never inferred from another substance, another place, or another country's pattern.
  5. Hand edits by our editors survive every refresh. When a sync disagrees with a reviewed entry, it raises a conflict for review instead of overwriting it.

The tracker records what official sources say; it does not give legal advice. Laws change, and a status is only as current as the source behind it — the date and the link sit next to every entry for exactly that reason.