Sheri Eckert (1963–2020)
Co-Architect, Oregon Measure 109; Marriage and Family Therapist
Marriage and family therapist who co-authored Oregon's Measure 109 with her husband Tom Eckert — the initiative that established the first state-level legal psilocybin therapy program in the US — and died of brain cancer before seeing it pass.
Biography
Sheri Eckert was a licensed marriage and family therapist who, with her husband Tom Eckert, authored Oregon's Measure 109 — the 2020 ballot initiative that created the first state-level legal psilocybin therapy program in the United States. The measure passed in November 2020 with 56% of the vote, authorizing the Oregon Health Authority to license psilocybin service centers and facilitators and to create a supervised therapeutic framework for psilocybin use.
Sheri Eckert did not live to see the vote. She was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in 2018 — while she and Tom were still in the early stages of building the initiative. Her personal experience confronting a terminal diagnosis, combined with her clinical background as a therapist and her knowledge of the growing evidence for psilocybin in end-of-life distress, deepened the initiative's purpose and urgency for her. She died in March 2020, seven months before Measure 109 passed at the ballot box.
Sheri's story — a therapist whose intimate knowledge of both the clinical evidence and the human stakes of terminal illness shaped the measure she authored — was part of the initiative's narrative and contributed to the measure's passage. Tom Eckert has continued her legacy through InnerTrek, which operates both as a licensed psilocybin service center and as one of Oregon's most active facilitator training programs.
Measure 109's design reflects Sheri's clinical grounding: the therapeutic framework, the facilitator training requirements, and the supervised session model all reflect a licensed therapeutic professional's understanding of what responsible psychedelic-assisted therapy requires.
Organizations
Why They Matter to the LearnShrooms Community
Sheri Eckert's authorship of Measure 109 and her personal story of facing terminal illness while working to create legal access to the therapy she believed could help people in her situation is one of the most significant individual contributions to the legal psilocybin framework in the United States. Every Oregon licensed psilocybin service session happens within a legal structure she helped design.
Legal Context
For the legal landscape where Sheri Eckert (1963–2020) operates, see psilocybin laws in Oregon.