Periodically we let you know the progress of various proposed legislation making its way through the Missouri General Assembly and suggest ways for you to contribute your viewpoint to your state Representative and state Senator.
The Missouri General Assembly is the state legislature of the State of Missouri and is composed of two chambers: the House of Representatives and the Senate. The General Assembly is responsible for creating laws for governing the State of Missouri. The Revised Statutes of Missouri (RSMo) are electronically available on this site: http://revisor.mo.gov/.
You can find your Representative and Senator, and their contact information, by entering your 9-digit zip code here.
The 2023 Regular Session (102nd General Assembly, 1st Regular Session) convened on Wednesday, January 4, 2023, and will end on Friday, May 12, 2023. You can see the House Bills (HB) by clicking here; and the Senate Bills (SB) are listed here.
If you are not a voting resident of Missouri, you can find out about legislation in your own state and write your own state legislators; also, we are looking for volunteers to monitor legislation in Missouri and the states surrounding Missouri — let us know if you’d like to help out.
Check out our handy discussion about How to write to a legislator.
We Urge You To Contact Your Legislators To Express Your Own Viewpoints
We’d like to describe some bills about which we’d particularly like you to contact your legislators. Please write, call or visit to express your viewpoint as an individual or professional, and not as a representative of any organization. Let us know the details and any responses you get. The full text of each bill can be found on the House and Senate Joint Bill Tracking site. Just put the bill number into the search box (e.g. SB123 or HB123).
Four Very Very Bad Bills
HB1154 (Sponsor: Representative Dan Houx, Republican, District 54, Johnson county)
and
SB614 (Sponsor: Senator Holly Thompson Rehder, Republican, District 27, Bollinger, Cape Girardeau, Iron, Madison, Perry, Reynolds and Scott counties)
These bills require the Department of Health and Senior Services, in collaboration with a Missouri university hospital and medical center operated by the Department of Veterans Affairs in Missouri, to research and conduct clinical trials on the efficacy of using psychedelic drugs such as MDMA (Ecstasy), psilocybin, and ketamine, for the treatment of patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, treatment-resistant depression, substance abuse disorders, or who require end-of-life care.
The mythical and debunked theory that a chemical imbalance in the brain causes depression, which launched an antidepressant industry in 1989, is being rephrased today to sell Americans on taking psychedelic drugs for their mental health instead.
In the wake of SSRI antidepressants like Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil having been exposed as being no more effective than a placebo—with a threat to industry profits—psychedelics are being peddled to replace antidepressants and capture a projected $10 billion a year market. But this change in treatment and theories is like switching seats on the Titanic.
The theories behind how psychedelics “work” today remain hype rather than science. We are seeing the same rapturous reception given psychedelics, buoyed by a re-hashed brain chemical theory and claims of a “renaissance” in mental health treatment. It took 30 years for the “chemical-imbalance-in-the-brain-causes-depression” myth to be fully recognized as pseudoscience and dangerously misleading to consumers. We should recognize the trademark signs of this same marketing scam with psychedelics and prevent America from “turning on and tuning out” to these mind-altering drugs before it is too late.
Read more about this fraud here.
HB1123 (Sponsor: Representative Mike Stephens, Republican, District 128, Hickory and Polk counties)
This bill establishes the “Dialectical Behavior Therapy Task Force” which shall recommend standards and procedures for certifications in dialectical behavior therapy, and requires health benefit plans to provide coverage for dialectical behavioral services. This bill is similar to SB 397, sponsored by Senator Greg Razer (Democrat, District 7, Jackson county).
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a psychotherapy for people who experience emotions very intensely (so-called “mood disorders”). It’s a type of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which is a form of psychotherapy that attempts to modify dysfunctional emotions, behaviors, and thoughts — by evaluating for the person, challenging the person’s behaviors, and getting the person to change those behaviors, often in combination with psychiatric drugs.
While DBT may be advertised as a method to reduce psychiatric drug use, psychopharmacologic interventions are oftentimes considered appropriate adjunctive care.
The real problem is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness”, and stigmatize unwanted behavior or study problems as “diseases.” Psychiatry’s stigmatizing labels, programs and treatments are harmful junk science; their diagnoses of “mental disorders” are a hoax – unscientific, fraudulent and harmful. All psychiatric treatments, not just psychiatric drugs, are dangerous.