Severance council weighs where and how healing centers can operate under Colorado''s Natural Medicine law

Severance officials spent the July 8 work session walking through how to implement Colorado''s Natural Medicine Act after voters legalized licensed use of psilocybin and psilocin. Town legal counsel said municipalities must permit licensed natural-medicine businesses but can regulate their time, place and manner.

Betsy (town attorney/consultant) told council the town cannot ban licensed facilitators or businesses that cultivate, manufacture, test or distribute regulated natural medicine, and cautioned that local rules cannot conflict with the Natural Medicine Act or Natural Medicine Code. She recommended separating healing centers, which she said are analogous to medical or therapist offices, from cultivation and manufacturing operations, which she advised placing in light-industrial or development-node zones.

Council members pressed staff on practical details: whether product sales would be taxable, how long a treatment session lasts, liability if a client harms someone after release, and how buffer distances from schools would affect site availability. Betsy said session administration typically includes intake, an administration period and a monitored recovery (often taking about five hours for a single session), and that regulations require a participant not be released while still under the influence and require facilitators to secure safe transportation. She said insurance and licensing minimums are set through state licensure and that she would research specific liability and insurance requirements.

On zoning, staff and council discussed corridor-based overlays along major roads (for example, U.S./State Highways and key commercial corridors) versus limiting uses to specific development-node parcels. Betsy warned that too-large distance buffers or confining uses to a single parcel could be deemed to have "zoned out" permitted activity, which would be inconsistent with state law. Her practical recommendation was to allow multiple (two to four) potential sites for both healing centers and cultivation/manufacturing so the market is not eliminated by a single parcel change.

Taxation and how the product would be classified (business sale vs. pharmaceutical/service) remained open questions. Betsy said she would prepare a memo and pull relevant state regulations and the Natural Medicine Code for council review; staff committed to provide a taxation analysis and sample zoning maps for planning commission review. Council members generally favored starting with conservative operating hours (the initial direction favored an 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Friday baseline) and asking planning staff to draft corridor maps and examine whether a 1,000-foot school buffer would leave adequate sites.

Next steps: staff and legal will prepare zoning maps and a memo on taxation, licensing and insurance; the draft ordinance will go to planning commission and return to council for a formal vote at a later meeting.