Jeff Shipley is new to the Iowa Capitol, but the lawmaker is ambitious: He wants to decriminalize psychedelic drugs, like mushrooms, to make them more accessible for medicinal purposes.

Shipley, of Fairfield, is a Republican with a libertarian bent. He doesn’t think Iowans, or members of his party, should be surprised by a set of drug-related bills he's filed this month. The legalization measures appear to be among the first of their kind to be introduced in the Iowa Legislature.

“I’m doing what I told people I was going to do,” the 30-year-old Shipley said. “The voters in my district, they’re going to give me a high-five.”

While it is not clear how many other statehouses are entertaining similar measures, there are active campaigns to make psychedelic mushrooms more accessible. There's a ballot measure underway in Oregon and election officials in the city of Denver received enough public signatures recently to put the issue of decriminalizing mushrooms on the ballot later this year. An effort in California did not get enough signatures to qualify for the ballot last year.

Shipley has an emoji of a mushroom on his Twitter page, where he describes himself as a sauerkraut salesman — his account name is @SauerkrautSales; he works for a company in Fairfield and he has 12 jars of sauerkraut at his chamber desk — and Wiener Dog Racing chairman, a reference to Shipley's work overseeing an annual local competition of dachshunds. In his spare time, he does stand-up comedy.

But Shipley is serious about the drug bills. He believes Iowans recovering from drug addictions and other health ailments could benefit from more accessibility to illegal drugs that could have medicinal purposes.

One measure he proposed would allow a state pharmacy board to reclassify ibogaine, psilocybin and MDMA for medicinal purposes, and remove related penalties when the drug use is for medicinal purposes.

Ibogaine has been studied as alternative treatment for drug addiction, according to the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. Psilocybin is a psychedelic compound produced in mushrooms, and MDMA, also known as ecstasy, is a synthetic drug that alters mood and perception. Shipley believes MDMA could help veterans suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. Some studies have supported that belief.

Another bill he's pushing would remove psilocybin and psilocyn, which are hallucinogenic, from the list of substances classified as having no currently accepted medical treatment use.

“When I was kind of daydreaming on like, ‘Why do I even want to be in the Legislature, why do I want to be a part of the office?’ It was this issue,” Shipley said.

Will the bills find support?

Shipley is also a realist.

“Obviously, it is very controversial and does elicit a lot of feelings,” he said on how fellow Republicans have responded so far. He said his colleagues aren't promising support, “but people are open-minded and they’re curious.”

Rep. Jared Klein, R-Keota and chair of the House Public Safety Committee, said he doesn't expect the legislation to advance this year — or any time soon.

"I haven't gotten an email from a constituent. I haven't received a phone call or had a discussion with anybody in the medical field saying that, 'We need to have access to this,'" he said. "It just seems like an idea from one legislator that they wanted to propose as law. Which is their prerogative, but that's all it is at this point."

Sen. Joe Bolkcom, an Iowa City Democrat, has long been vocal about making medical marijuana more accessible. He recently proposed that the state legalize and regulate marijuana the same way it does beer or liquor. But, he said, Democratic support isn't there yet for Shipley's drug bills.

"I'm not sure we're ready to simply make all these drugs legal," Bolkcom said.

Shipley emailed a copy of the bills to every member of both chambers a few weeks ago. Shipley said he received two responses, one from Bolkcom and one from a conservative member in the House, whom he did not identify.

Shipley plans to keep pushing the issue

Shipley said he will not give up the fight. He intends to try again next year. Or maybe the year after that. Shipley hopes to serve in office for a decade, if voters re-elect him.

Shipley represents District 82 in southeast Iowa, where he defeated Democrat Phil Miller by 37 votes in one of the closest races in the November election. The district had been held by a Democrat for decades.

Shipley thinks he won because of his relentless door-knocking and because he made a promise to his constituents that he would address issues like smart meters. The devices, which transmit data about electric usage through radio frequency, have been a contentious issue for some Fairfield residents. Some believe the smart meters are unsafe.

Shipley has filed a bill that would prohibit a public utility from installing a digital meter or smart meter without a customer’s consent. The Iowa Utilities Board recently rejected Alliant Energy's request to charge a $15 monthly fee to customers who want to opt out of the utility's smart meters. Shipley considers the decision a victory for his constituents.

Other items on Shipley's to-do list: He's filed more than 30 bills since stepping foot into the Capitol building last month. Among them: a plan to require 100 percent of school lunches to be certified organic; a proposal to require students to read the Russian novel “The Gulag Archipelago” about prisons and labor camps; and, legislation that would prohibit adding hydrofluorosilicic acid or any other fluoride-based additive into public and private drinking water supply systems.

Shipley said he knows some of his ideas may not get heard in a subcommittee meeting, which is the first step toward a bill becoming a law. But he wants those meetings, because he believes they would bring more of the public into the legislative process.

"You have to start somewhere. These issues are important," he said. "When you introduce legislation, people start taking it more seriously."