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Mushrooms in a small clear container
The Oregon Health Authority is expected to release draft rules for its upcoming psilocybin program Tuesday. Daniel Berehulak / Getty Images

Hello, Portland! Let’s see what’s going on in the world on this fine Tuesday morning.

In local news:

• Oregon officials plan to lift the state indoor mask mandate no later than March 31 when COVID-19 hospitalizations are projected to drop to 400 per day. Currently, hospitalizations throughout the state average over 1,000 per day.

• Bi-Mart closed 60 of its pharmacy counters in Oregon last year. While city folk were able to transfer their prescriptions to the plethora of other pharmacies in the area, the closures left rural Oregonians scrambling for alternatives. In Baker County, patients had to transfer approximately 1,500 prescriptions to the three remaining pharmacies in the 3,000 square mile county. Lately, Baker County residents have had to stand in line for more than two hours to get their medications.

• The Oregon Health Authority is expected to release a set of draft rules Tuesday for its upcoming psilocybin program. The rules will touch on how the mushrooms will be produced, how the mushrooms will be tested, and what kind of training people who are assisting clients taking the drug will need. The final set of rules must be developed by the end of 2022.

• Portland was incorporated into a city 171 years ago today! Here’s a little history lesson on Stumptown, why the city is so white, and our reputation for being “weird.”

In national and international news:

• The Supreme Court pushed paused on a lower court’s ruling that Alabama must redraw its congressional districts to more accurately represent Black voters. In a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court decided the ruling was too close to the 2022 election cycle (even though the whole point of the redrawing the maps was to restore voting power to Black voters before the 2022 elections). The Supreme Court will decide at a later date whether Alabama’s current congressional map violates voting rights laws.

• The US government must pay $230 million to the victims and families of victims of the 2017 church shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas, a judge ruled Monday. The shooter, who killed 26 people and wounded 22 others, should have been barred from legally owning a gun because of a previous domestic violence charge he was convicted of while serving in the US Air Force. However, the Air Force failed to enter the shooter’s name into the correct database, allowing him to legally obtain the rifle he used to shoot nearly 50 people.

• The US Justice Department is “evaluating” allowing safe injection sites in the US where intravenous drug users can inject drugs under watch of medical staff who can help reverse potentially fatal overdoses. This is a major reversal from last year when the Justice Department strongly fought a plan to open a safe injection site in Philadelphia. Safe injection sites have been open for nearly 20 years in Canada, eliminating overdose deaths at the sites and showing no signs of increasing or encouraging drug use.

• Authorities in Uganda are trying to legally mandate COVID-19 vaccinations by passing legislation that calls for a six-month jail sentence for anyone who does not comply with vaccination requirements. Vaccination efforts have slowed in the country—so far only 12.7 million doses have been administered to the country’s 44 million people.

• And, the Oscar nominations were announced this morning! If you’re into that kind of thing, here’s the full list.