Bipartisan Lawmakers Work To Codify Provisions Of Trump’s Psychedelics Order Into Law To ‘Permanently’ Streamline Research

Bipartisan congressional lawmakers say they’re working to codify into law an executive order President Donald Trump issued to streamline research and access into psychedelic medicine.

Reps. Lou Correa (D-CA) and Jack Bergman (R-MI)—co-chairs of the Congressional Psychedelics Advancing Therapies (PATH) Caucus—both recently spoke about the need to enact into law provisions to protect the intent of the executive action to ensure ongoing support for psychedelics research for military veterans and people with certain mental health conditions even under future president’s.

During an interview with CBS News last week, Correa was asked about potential complications with the president’s action given that Marty Makary resigned as head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which plays a key role in advancing drug research and development.

He are Bergman are “working jointly to make sure we put this into legislation—to move forward permanently, finding a solution for PTSD, every day in America,” Correa said, adding that he the novel therapy “will revolutionize the way we treat mental health in America” and potentially “lead to helping us with” addressing homelessness.

“What we want to do is save veterans [and] make sure that they’re healed from those invisible wounds that they bring back from the battlefield—and this ibogaine psychedelic promises to be that magic cure that fixes not only mental health, PTSD but alcoholism, drug addiction and a host of other things,” he said. “We want medical research to answer these questions.”

Separately, Voice of OC reported that Correa told the outlet he wants to “codify Trump’s executive order and create guidelines and funding for the initiative.”

“We’re talking about reexamining the war on drugs, which was not based on science but politics,” the congressman told the outlet. “‘Just say no’ hasn’t worked.”

Bergman, for his part, said at The Hill’s Rethinking Psychedelic Treatment for America’s Mental Health Crisis event this month that “when you got the top cover of the executive order and the executive order will only last, you know, as long as President Trump is in office and then the next president, we don’t know, could they rescind it?”

“That’s why the time is now to get the ball rolling—to see some breakthroughs,” he said. “It’s not the time to sit around and, ‘Well, no, we can just delay a little longer. We won’t have to deal with this.’ If you’re that person, we’re coming after you. OK, you need to be doing something else for a living.”

The GOP lawmaker added that he’s “product agnostic” as far as psychedelics studies are concerned. “I’m interested in outcomes.”

“We tend to think about ‘Okay, what drug are we going to use? What’s the medium going to be?’ That’s only part of the equation,” he said. We have to have the centers set up and we have to have the therapists trained and ready to administer the protocols in this new way.”

Correa and Bergman have been consistently advocating for continued support for psychedelics reform in the weeks since Trump signed the executive order.

The two lawmakers also sponsored an amendment to a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) funding bill on the House floor that sought to raise awareness about the benefits of psychedelic and other therapies for military veterans.

They additionally led a bipartisan coalition of 32 members of Congress in sending a letter urging federal health officials to expedite ongoing reviews of psychedelic therapies.

Meanwhile, Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) also recently gave some across-the-aisle credit to Trump for his administration’s moves to accelerate therapeutic access to psychedelics and also federally reschedule marijuana.

Shortly after Trump signed the executive order, FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced steps that they say will help with “accelerating” therapeutic access to psychedelics for patients dealing with serious mental health conditions.

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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said recently that the Trump administration is “very anxious” to create a pathway for access to psychedelics therapy and that top officials across federal agencies want to “get it out to the public as quickly as possible.”

In an interview on the Joe Rogan Experience in February, Kennedy said he’s confident “we’re going to get it done,” with plans to develop and finalize rules that would enable patients with conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression to access psychedelic substances like psilocybin and MDMA in a “very controlled setting.”

“Everybody in my agency…is very anxious to get a rule out there that will allow these kind of studies and will allow access under therapeutic settings, particularly [for] the military soldiers who have suffered these injuries to get access to these products,” the HHS secretary said. “We’re working through that process now. We’re all working on it and trying to make it happen.”

“I think that we’re going to get it done,” he said.

Last June, Kennedy said his agency is “absolutely committed” to expanding research on the benefits of psychedelic therapy and, alongside of the head of FDA, is aiming to provide legal access to such substances for military veterans “within 12 months.”

Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins also disclosed in April that he had an “eye-opening” talk with Kennedy about the therapeutic potential of psychedelic medicine. And he said he’s open to the idea of having the government provide vouchers to cover the costs of psychedelic therapy for veterans who receive services outside of VA as Congress considers pathways for access.

Bipartisan congressional lawmakers introduced legislation this session to provide $30 million in funding annually to establish psychedelic-focused “centers for excellence” at U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) facilities, where veterans could receive novel treatment involving substances like psilocybin, MDMA and ibogaine.

A U.S. Senate committee held a hearing last month on a bipartisan bill to promote research into the therapeutic potential psychedelics by creating a new office at VA that would advance the development innovative treatments for serious mental health conditions and assist in reviewing the scheduling status of drugs like psilocybin, ibogaine and MDMA.

Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) has said ibogaine represents an “astonishing breakthrough” in the nation’s current “sick care system” that’s left people with serious mental health conditions without access to promising alternative treatment options.

Photo elements courtesy of carlosemmaskype and Apollo.

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