January 29, 2026 Virtual Dinner Meeting

Virtual Dinner Meeting

Thursday, January 29, 2026 at 7:00PM

(This program will be recorded.)

Alleviating Suffering At End-Of-Life:

Psychedelics And The Law 

Psychedelic-assisted therapies are emerging as a promising tool in end-of-life and palliative care, offering new ways to alleviate suffering and enhance quality of life for individuals with serious or life-threatening illness. As legal frameworks evolve, elder law attorneys are uniquely positioned to play a key role in guiding clients navigating this emerging area.

Speaker Kathryn Tucker has spent decades advancing the rights of elders and terminally ill to dignity, relief from suffering, and access to compassionate care at the end-of-life. 

This presentation will focus on the legal landscape of psychedelic-assisted therapies in palliative and end-of-life care, such as the Breakthrough Remedies Act, the Right to Try Act, and cases shaping access to these emerging treatments.

Attorneys attending this program will gain insight into the overall landscape of psychedelic-assisted therapies and how they intersect with elder law.

Presenter

Kathryn L. Tucker, J.D. is recognized as a national leader in spearheading creative and effective efforts to promote improved care for seriously ill and dying patients. She has served as Director of Advocacy at a variety of nonprofit organizations including the National Psychedelics Association, the Completed Life Initiative, the End of Life Liberty Project, the Disability Rights Legal Center, Compassion & Choices,  and Compassion in Dying. Tucker served as a founding member of the Psychedelic Bar Association and Co-Chair of the Litigation and Advocacy Committee. She is a Founding Member of the Initiative on Psychedelics and Healing of the Global Wellness Institute. In periods of private practice Tucker served as Special Counsel at Emerge Law Group, where she Co-Chaired the Psychedelic Practice Group and as a litigation attorney at Perkins Coie (Seattle Office). Tucker has held faculty appointments as Associate Professor of Law at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, and as Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Washington, Seattle University and Lewis & Clark Schools of Law. Professor Tucker teaches in the areas of law, medicine and ethics, with a focus on the end-of-life, and psychedelic law and policy. In April 2014, Professor Tucker was named a Fulbright Specialist by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the Institute of International Education’s Council for International Exchange of Scholars, to share her scholarship abroad. She held Faculty Appointments at the Universities of Auckland, Canterbury and Otago in 2015; in 2019 Tucker received another Fulbright Specialist Grant to teach at law schools in the United Kingdom.  

Ms. Tucker served as lead counsel representing patients and physicians in two landmark federal cases decided by the United States Supreme Court, Washington v. Glucksberg and Vacco v. Quill, asserting that mentally competent terminally ill patients have a constitutional right to choose aid in dying. These cases are widely acknowledged to have prompted nationwide attention to improving care of the dying, and to have established a federal constitutional right to aggressive pain management. 

Ms. Tucker also handles state constitutional litigation asserting claims of a similar nature, including Baxter v. Montana which established the right to choose aid in dying as a matter of state law. Tucker played a key role in successfully defending the Oregon Death with Dignity Act from attack by the United States Department of Justice in Oregon v. Gonzales, representing the patient plaintiffs in proceedings before the Federal District Court, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court of the United States. Tucker developed and led the nation’s first litigation under the Right to Try Act, representing a palliative care physician and several cancer patients seeking to compel DEA to allow access to psilocybin therapy. AIMS et al v DEA. She is also involved with a first of its kind petition to reschedule psilocybin and related litigation. Tucker leads the effort to ensure that homebound disabled and dying Oregonians are able to access psilocybin services. Cusker et al v OHA.

Also experienced and skillful in legislative advocacy, Ms. Tucker was involved in the development of, and successful campaigns to pass, the Washington Death with Dignity Act (2008), Vermont’s Patient Choice at the End of Life Act (2013), Oregon’s Psilocybin Services Act (2020), New Mexico’s Medical Psilocybin Act(2025). She is involved with some of the efforts to enact federal legislation to open access to psilocybin and other investigational psychedelic drugs.

Tucker served as co-counsel in the first case in the nation to assert that failure to treat pain adequately constitutes elder abuse, which resulted in a finding of liability and a jury verdict award of $1.5 million to the patient’s family. She has been principal author of various state legislative measures to ensure physician education in pain management and provision of information to terminally ill patients about end-of-life care options. She also defends physicians facing adverse consequences for treating pain attentively and aggressively.

Ms. Tucker is listed in the prestigious directory Who’s Who in American Law and was recognized as Lawyer of the Year, Runner-Up by the National Law Journal. She appears frequently on television and radio discussing end-of-life care, decision-making and physician-assisted dying. Media appearances include Crossfire, the PBS NewsHour, Larry King and CNN. Her work has been profiled in the National Law Journal, American Lawyer, Journal of the American Bar Association, Legal Times, and the magazines George, Vogue, Time, People and Health, among others.

Professor Tucker is an invited speaker at educational programs on the subjects of improving care at the end-of-life, end-of-life decision-making, and aid in dying. She has presented to the American Bar Association, the Association of American Law Schools, the American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys, the American Pain Society, the American Academy of Pain Management, the Federation of State Medical Boards, and the American College of Legal Medicine. 

Tucker is also a yoga teacher and has developed and offers workshops exploring the intersection of law and medicine at the end-of-life and what yogic teachings have to offer.