A4 BAKER CITY HERALD • SATURDAY, JULY 16, 2022
BAKER CITY
Opinion
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news@bakercityherald.com
Baker City, Oregon
EDITORIAL
Psilocybin
use worth
considering
V
oters in Baker City and Baker County might
have a chance in the Nov. 8 general election
to ban the production and use, in a state-
licensed business, of psilocybin, the hallucinogenic
substance in “magic mushrooms.”
The Baker City Council has directed city staff to draft
an ordinance that would take the matter to voters. Baker
County commissioners have scheduled a pair of pub-
lic hearings, one on July 20 and one on Aug. 3, to collect
comments on a similar ordinance.
County voters have already expressed their feelings
about this particular drug. In the November 2020 election
Measure 109, which legalizes supervised use of psilocybin
for people 21 and older, passed statewide with about 57%
of the votes. But almost 64% of the voters who cast ballots
in Baker County opposed the measure.
But voters, rather than reflexively rejecting anything
involving drug use, ought to consider the potential bene-
fits of allowing licensed psilocybin production or “service
centers” if, as seems likely, they’ll see the topic on their bal-
lot again this fall.
The state’s psilocybin system, which is under the direc-
tion of the Oregon Health Authority (OHA), is quite dif-
ferent from Oregon’s recreational marijuana industry.
Buying marijuana is much like buying liquor — you go
to a state-licensed store, buy the product and then take it
elsewhere to use it. Marijuana dispensaries are banned in
Baker City, however.
With psilocybin, people, when the state starts issuing
licenses in 2023, will be able to ingest the drug only at a li-
censed business.
Well, sort of.
During the 2020 election Oregon voters also approved
Measure 110. It decriminalizes the possession of relatively
small amounts of many drugs, including psilocybin, mak-
ing the punishment for possession effectively the same as
a minor traffic ticket. Put simply, local residents who want
to take psilocybin now have little disincentive — and they
don’t need to make an appointment at a “service center,”
to borrow the OHA’s rather silly euphemism.
But euphemism notwithstanding, psilocybin use un-
der the state system would be much more controlled than
it is now. People who take the drug would be in a safe
place during the several hours the hallucinogenic effects
can persist, and monitored by a “facilitator” — the OHA
surely does love its generic terms — who will have to
complete 160 hours of training.
Based on predictions about how psilocybin centers
will operate, and in particular the cost, the question fac-
ing Baker City and Baker County residents might well be
moot. It could cost around $1,000 for one “session” — or
“trip,” if you prefer ’60s vernacular. There’s not likely a big
clientele for psilocybin hereabouts.
Nonetheless, psilocybin has the potential, based on le-
gitimate medical research, to help deal with significant so-
cietal problems that affect Baker County, without creating
new ones. Researchers have found that psilocybin can be
effective in treating depression, anxiety and addiction to
other drugs (psilocybin itself is not addictive, experts say).
To be sure, the aforementioned price for patronizing a
psilocybin “center” could be prohibitive for people who
might benefit most from its effects.
And to be clear, Oregon doesn’t require a prescription
or recommendation from a physician to use psilocybin at
a licensed business — people can go simply to experience
the hallucinogenic results.
Some local voters will undoubtedly oppose anything
they perceive to be a government endorsement of drug
use.
But Oregon’s psilocybin system, due to its restrictions, is
different. There are legitimate questions, of course — how
well will the centers be monitored to ensure they don’t let
clients drive home while they’re still in the altered state
that psilocybin induces.
Yet voters shouldn’t blithely reject something that could
help people overcome debilitating depression or other
mental issues, or conquer an addiction to much more
dangerous drugs. That’s a particularly vital issue to con-
sider in an era when fentanyl, the powerful synthetic opi-
oid, is ubiquitous and causing many unintentional over-
dose deaths in people who didn’t even realize the drug
they took was tainted with fentanyl.
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor
YOUR VIEWS
Stop by the Baker Food Co-op
and see all it has to offer
I have been a member of the Baker
Food Co-op since returning to my
hometown in 1988. I enjoy being part
of a community of people who value
quality natural food and shopping in an
environment that focuses on that. I be-
lieve that the co-op is a unique asset to
the community and for that reason I ac-
cepted the invitation to join the board of
directors when asked to do so last fall.
As explained in a recent Baker City
Herald article (7-7-22), the co-op has
reached a point where it is necessary
to ask those who want to see the co-op
continue operations into the future to
step up and pledge their support. Shop-
pers are being asked to pledge to spend
at least $75 monthly. An error in the
article stated that there is an annual ad-
ministrative fee of $25. That fee is ac-
tually just $10. The $25 fee is for a life-
time membership that also gives you
10% off all purchases for the first 30
days of your membership. I encourage
you to seriously consider making this
pledge and working on changing your
shopping habits just a little to make it
work for you.
If you haven’t been to the co-op for a
while, stop in and see what’s there. The
hours are convenient, there’s no park-
ing lot to navigate and you will find a
friendly atmosphere with an abundance
of great food to help feed yourself and
your family.
The opportunity to purchase many
items in bulk, while re-using your own
container, is a great way to economize
on groceries and cut down on throw-
away plastic in your life. Bulk grains and
flours are available in organic as well as
non-organic options. You can even pur-
chase liquid soaps of all sorts and per-
sonal care products in bulk. Member-
ship is not required to shop, but there is
a 5% discount to members for items on
the shelf. Items special ordered earn a
greater discount. Give it a try and sup-
port this local community asset!
Carolyn Kulog
Baker City
Board member, Baker Food Co-op
Grateful to all who helped
in a serious medical crisis
On June 8 I called 911 and would like
to thank all those that responded in our
crisis. The medical people, law enforce-
ment, ambulance driver, ER at Saint Al’s,
everyone responded so quickly, profes-
sionally and kindly, helping us through
a major accident. You are stellar in per-
forming your duties. With much appre-
ciation.
P.S. We are now home again, and
thankful for all those that prayed also.
God is great and greatly to be praised!
May He bless you in abundance as you
continue to do your jobs.
Ann Schneider
Baker City
COLUMN
Wandering bear unites neighbors
T
he words “bear” and “golf course”
clang in the ears when crammed
into the same sentence.
The combination is not quite so jarring,
certainly, as, say, “cougar” and “bath tub.”
Or “king cobra” and “bedroom closet.”
Still and all, bears are not commonly as-
sociated with golf.
Birdies, sure.
Even the occasional eagle.
But you needn’t be a duffer like me to
get a hitch in your backswing if a furry
figure barrels across the fairway in that
uniquely ursine gait, simultaneously
clumsy and efficient.
I was lining up a convoluted sentence
rather than a tricky par putt when I heard
the word “bear” on the police scanner.
I was in my office on Sunday morning,
July 3, a little before 8 o’clock, working on
a few matters I didn’t want to have to start
afresh on the coming holiday.
(Newspapers, alas, as a rule eschew the
governmental approach to days off.)
From what I could gather, based on the
scanner chatter and a Facebook post (the
nearly inevitable modern version of the con-
versations that used to be lobbed back and
forth over a backyard fence), a bear, fresh off
its tour of Quail Ridge Golf Course, had am-
bled down the hill to Foothill Drive.
This sounded considerably more inter-
esting than what I was engaged in.
(What that was I don’t recall, which sug-
gests that even something less intriguing
than a bear on a city street likely would
have lured me from my desk.)
I was just starting to twist the key to
lock the door when I remembered to grab
the telephoto lens for the camera.
I didn’t expect to have a chance to get
especially close to a bear.
Nor did I want one.
When I turned off Indiana Avenue onto
the north end of Foothill and rounded the
corner I saw the flashing lights from sev-
eral police cars. I parked a couple blocks
away and walked south.
The bear, a yearling male, had already
sought refuge in the place that bears often
do — up a tree.
A birch tree, specifically, one of a pair
growing between two apartment buildings
on the east side of Foothill.
I stood directly across the street and
started chatting with Julie Bouchard, who
lives on the west side of Foothill, and her
daughter-in-law, Megan Cloyd, who grew
up in Baker City and was visiting for the
Jayson
Jacoby
holiday weekend.
Bouchard told me how she had just let
out of the house her dog and Cloyd’s two
black Labs when she heard someone up on
the golf course yelling about a bear.
Not long after, she saw the bruin gam-
boling through a field next to her home.
I took a bunch of photos of the bear.
And since the animal seemed uninter-
ested in coming down — the one time it
moved in that direction a flurry of yells
from the police officers on the ground
quickly convinced the bear that its ele-
vated perch was safer by comparison — I
talked with Baker City Police officer Lance
Woodward, who was directing traffic.
For the next two hours or so, while ev-
eryone waited for Brian Ratliff, a local
wildlife biologist with the Oregon Depart-
ment of Fish and Wildlife, to arrive with
his tranquilizer dart gun and bear cage,
I felt rather like I had been invited to a
neighborhood block party.
There was, at any rate, a certain festive
atmosphere there along Foothill on a mild
and mainly sunny morning.
Also the sort of camaraderie that can fer-
ment so rapidly in circumstances when a
group of people are brought together by an
event none of them could have conceivably
expected, but which is generally benign.
Benign for the people, at any rate.
Several of the spectators I talked with,
however, were concerned about whether
the bear would survive.
Baker County Sheriff Travis Ash an-
nounced that the plan was to tranquilize,
not kill, the bear — information that those
gathered in the street and in adjacent yards
endorsed with enthusiasm, even among
some spectators who talked about hunting
bears in years past.
(Bears which, obviously, did not roam
city streets.)
The operation didn’t proceed perfectly,
to be sure.
After Ratliff darted the bear, the ani-
mal, rather than tumbling to the ground,
climbed several feet higher in the tree be-
fore nodding off.
When it became clear that gravity
wasn’t sufficient to bring the bear down,
Jeff Smith, who owns J2K Excavating and
lives on Foothill, volunteered to drive his
bucket lift down the street and make it
available for the rescue.
Ratliff and Ash, along with Noodle Per-
kins, Baker County roadmaster, stepped
onto the lift. Perkins maneuvered the plat-
form to a point where Ratliff could get
hold of the bear. A few minutes later the
bruin, still snoozing in its chemically-in-
duced stupor, was inside the cage and en
route to the Eagle Creek area.
Ratliff said the bear was fully alert by
noon, less than two hours after being tran-
quilized. The animal bounded out of the
cage and, I expect, is at this moment ac-
quainting itself with its new surroundings.
I had fun that morning.
I don’t always have the chance to watch
a news event happen. It is the most gran-
ular sort of reporting, and also sort of
old-fashioned, standing in a yard and
chatting with neighbors.
Technology, as it almost always does,
intruded. Between scribbling in my note-
book and taking photos I was also tapping
a Facebook post on my phone, something
that as recently as 20 years ago would have
seemed preposterous.
It was in the end a good story — not
least because it had the happy ending that
most people appreciate.
I enjoyed watching police and a biolo-
gist and an equipment operator demon-
strate their skills in an unusual situation.
Also a very public one, an arena especially
rare for Ratliff, who typically works not
before a suburban audience but in the re-
mote places where bears and other wildlife
spend most of their time.
The round of applause that swept
through the audience as Ratliff guided the
bear into the cage seemed to me utterly
uncontrived, and wholly appropriate.
I walked back to my car feeling that pe-
culiar compulsion to quickly tell the story
I had just witnessed, while the details were
fresh and easy to recall.
Words, like dairy products, are perish-
able and can, if left too long, become un-
palatable.
I had as well a renewed appreciation for
living in a place where such tales are there
to be told — tales of bears and birch trees
and biologists, of people who might shoot
a bear in the woods if they have a tag, but
who want only to see a bruin survive when
it goes astray and ends up in a place where
bears ought not to be.
Jayson Jacoby is editor of the Baker City Herald.
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