Politics
Vance, RFK And Other Top Trump Admin Officials Attend MAHA Summit Featuring Psychedelics Session
Vice President JD Vance, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Marty Makary and other top Trump administration officials are attending a “Make America Healthy Again” summit that features a session on the therapeutic potential of psychedelics.
Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and Katie Miller, wife of President Donald Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller, are also among those who will be in attendance at Wednesday’s event, which is meant to broadly showcase the MAHA agenda and areas of innovation in public health.
Whether any of the high-profile attendees plan to go to the psychedelics session is uncertain, but the fact that the issue is receiving attention at the Trump-aligned summit is notable.
German investor Christian Angermayer, founder of the psychedelics company AtaiBeckley, will lead the fireside chat, Politico reported. The biopharmaceutical corporation has been working to develop a 5-MeO-DMT therapeutic for the treatment of severe depression.
The session is titled, “Psychedelic Medicine: The Next Frontier In Mental Health.”
“Today is an important milestone,” Tony Lyons, president of MAHA Action, said of the overall event in a press release. “It’s the culmination of a movement that was 40 years in the making – a movement that will usher in a generation of healthier children and an era of incredible innovation geared toward prevention rather than treatment.”
The vice president, for his part, previously expressed interest in psychedelics therapy, telling podcaster Joe Rogan last year that he’s “fascinated” by the topic and that he’d like to learn more about potential regulatory pathways to provide medical access to substances like MDMA and psilocybin.
Kennedy campaigned on legalizing and taxing psychedelics to support mental health treatment programs back when he was running for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination. And he’s continued to be involved in conversations about advancing the issue since joining the Trump administration has head of HHS.
In 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.”
FDA’s Makary also said in May that exploring the therapeutic potential of psychedelics such as psilocybin and ibogaine is a “top priority” for the Trump administration, especially when it comes to helping military veterans grapple with trauma from being sent to fight “unnecessary wars.”
Meanwhile, a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) official recently said the federal government needs to “gear up” to provide psychedelic medicines to veterans and ensure that therapists are equipped to facilitate the novel therapy.
Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) over the summer extolled the therapeutic promise of ibogaine on an episode of his podcast, drawing attention to a Stanford University study that found the psychedelic showed potential to treat PTSD, anxiety and depression in military veterans with traumatic brain injury.
The message around the therapeutic potential of psychedelics has been getting out in a number of ways, including in prominent conservative media circles and within the Trump administration.
For example, a Navy SEAL veteran credited with killing Osama Bin Laden said during a Fox News interview that psychedelic therapy has helped him process the trauma he experienced during his time in the military, stressing that “it works” and should be an available treatment option.
That interview came days after the U.S. House of Representatives included an amendment to a spending bill from Reps. Lou Correa (D-CA) and Jack Bergman (R-MI) that would encourage VA to support research into the benefits of psychedelics in treating medical conditions commonly affecting military veterans.
VA 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.
Collins also recently visited a facility conducting research on psychedelics, and he reiterated that it’s his “promise” to advance research into the therapeutic potential of the substances—even if that might take certain policy changes within the department and with congressional support.
The secretary’s visit to the psychedelics research center came about a month after the VA secretary met with a military veteran who’s become an advocate for psilocybin access to discuss the therapeutic potential of psychedelic medicine for the veteran community.
Collins also briefly raised the issue in a Cabinet meeting with the president in April.
Correa and Bergman—co-chairs of the Congressional Psychedelic Advancing Therapies (PATH) Caucus—introduced a bill in April to provide $30 million in funding annually to establish psychedelics-focused “centers for excellence” at VA facilities, where veterans could receive novel treatment involving substances like psilocybin, MDMA and ibogaine.
Bergman has also expressed optimism about the prospects of advancing psychedelics reform under Trump, arguing that the administration’s efforts to cut spending and the federal workforce will give agencies “spines” to tackle such complex issues.
Kennedy, for his part, also said in April that he had a “wonderful experience” with LSD at 15 years old, which he took because he thought he’d be able to see dinosaurs, as portrayed in a comic book he was a fan of.
Last October, Kennedy specifically criticized FDA under the prior administration over the agency’s “suppression of psychedelics” and a laundry list of other issues that he said amounted to a “war on public health” that would end under the Trump administration.
In December, VA separately announced that it’s providing $1.5 million in funding to study the efficacy of MDMA-assisted therapy for veterans with PTSD and alcohol use disorder (AUD).
In January, former VA Under Secretary for Health Shereef Elnahal said that it was “very encouraging” that Trump’s pick to have Kennedy lead HHS has supported psychedelics reform. And he hoped to work with him on the issue if he stayed on for the next administration, but that didn’t pan out.
Image courtesy of CostaPPR.
