What Regulation Can’t Do: Why Psychedelic Care Needs Independent Infrastructure

Regulation is a beginning, not a foundation.

In Colorado and beyond, psychedelic policy has focused on safety, consent, and harm reduction. Regulation establishes permission. It defines what is allowed, who may participate, and under what conditions psychedelic facilitation can move from the margins into public life.

But regulation alone cannot create care.

Policy does not build resilience. It does not provide capital, continuity, or relational support. It does not ensure that facilitators can afford training, withstand income fluctuations, or remain present with integrity over time. Those outcomes depend on infrastructure that exists after permission is granted.

This gap is not unique to psychedelics. It appears in every post-prohibition or emerging care field. Policy opens a door. Without supporting systems behind it, only a narrow set of people can walk through, and fewer can remain.

During my time on Colorado’s Natural Medicine Advisory Board, I saw how quickly the field moved once permission was established. Training programs expanded. Public interest surged. Expectations rose. What did not materialize was the infrastructure facilitators needed to sustain themselves within this new landscape.

That absence is not a regulatory failure. It is a category error.

Regulators are not meant to build lending systems, mutual aid structures, or long-horizon financial tools. Those must be built independently: slowly, deliberately, and with accountability to values rather than timelines.

Inner Guru exists in that space.

We do not replace regulation. We follow it. Our work begins where policy ends: with the material conditions that determine whether care can actually be held. Independent infrastructure allows experimentation, adaptation, and restraint in ways formal systems cannot.

If psychedelic care is to remain ethical, inclusive, and continuous, it must be supported by structures that are not bound to political cycles, institutional risk aversion, or extractive growth mandates.

Permission is necessary.
Support is essential.

Independent infrastructure is how the distance between the two is bridged.