5NP BILL PASSES THE OREGON LEGISLATURE
for real
Our 5NP bill, HB 2143A1, passed the Senate chamber yesterday afternoon at 12:18 pm. Almost unanimously.2 Which means it only has to go to the Governor’s desk, and then it will be a law. Oregon will have its own 5NP law.
Honestly it’s a little disorienting. It feels like forever since we’ve been tuning into the Senate hearings every day, even though it’s only been two weeks (our bill was first scheduled for May 20th). Really, though, from the time I knew what a 5NP law was, I also knew it was highly unlikely that Oregon would ever get one and so this requires some serious internal re-calibration.
Here’s the link to the video, which includes an excellent and entertaining introduction by Sen. Lisa Reynolds of the Health Care Committee (“The Five Needle Protocol — I think it was Senator Broadman who said, that sounds like a new Netflix series.”) Our part starts at 1:27:38.
WCA and POCA Tech would like to thank everyone — seen and unseen — who walked with us over this threshold, particularly:
William Miller, Cree Bort, the NAYA Action Fund and the NAYA Family Center, for making it happen (and CareOregon for financially supporting our partnership); Representative Nosse and his team for sponsoring and shepherding HB 2143A; Representative Nelson for co-sponsoring the bill and his team, especially Zeke Adler, for sponsoring our first pop-ups at the Capitol; Nicole Krishnaswami and Elizabeth Ross of the Oregon Medical Board, for very helpful guidance; Amber Reding and the OAA; and everyone who joined the 5NP Coalition, with special thanks to Oregon Heals Coalition and its member organizations;
5NP advocates and supporters in other states, especially Chuck Pyle for many months of excellent coaching; everyone in the POCA Cooperative; 5NP advocates in Oregon, especially Dolores Jimerson and Susan Williams; everyone who testified for our hearings;
and 5NP ancestors Laura Cooley, Michael Smith, and Mutulu Shakur (and all the other trailblazers, both living and dead, of the Lincoln Detox Acupuncture Collective).3
And of course, special congratulations to POCA Tech’s Cohort 8 for a belated —but extraordinarily successful — completion of their Capstone project.4
And thank you all, once again, for reading and following our 5NP journey. (I still can’t quite believe we did it, we passed actual legislation.) Please stay tuned for the next part, which is regulation and implementation. There’s a lot to do before we can start training people to practice 5NP, but you know us — we’re going to hit the ground running.
If you’re new to this newsletter and this topic, welcome! You can read a short description here of 5NP and why we wanted to pass a law — and you can find other posts on this topic here (pretty much a blow-by-blow account of our process).
Two senators voted against it but we don’t know why; we’re kind of scratching our heads about that. That’s okay though! The important thing is that it passed.
Please forgive me if there’s anybody I forgot to thank — I’m kind of on tilt right now, and so is everybody who’s double-checking my drafts. We so appreciate all the community support we’ve received.
This will go down in school history as the most ambitious Capstone project ever and it’s particularly satisfying that Cohort 8 is (for the most part) professionally qualified.
Congratulations!!!!!!
CONGRATULATIONS 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼