FDA commissioner says psychedelics are a “top priority,” and Connecticut legislators just barely pass decrim bill
Plus: DEA grants right to use ayahuasca to Spokane, WA church, and New EU funding for psychedelics research
Happy Friday and welcome back to The Microdose, an independent journalism newsletter brought to you by the U.C. Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics.
FDA commissioner says psychedelics are a “top priority”
U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner Marty Makary appeared on NewsNation last Friday, where host Jillian Michaels, best known as the coach on reality weight loss show The Biggest Loser, asked Makary about the promise of “plant medicines.”
Makary hit on many of the same talking points Veterans Affairs head Doug Collins has mentioned in recent interviews: that he’s heard from people that psychedelics like psilocybin have helped them with PTSD or depression. He said that potential treatments for post-combat veterans is a “top priority” for the agency, and expressed a desire to speed up drug approvals. The FDA’s job is to “listen to doctors, listen to patients” about their experiences with drugs, and to “not get in the way with red tape,” he said. His remarks were short on specifics, and a couple stumbles suggest Makary is not very familiar with these substances: he called MDMA “MDNA,” and ibogaine “igobaine.”
Regardless, psychedelics industry insiders cheered the interview, pointing to it as a positive sign for the future of psychedelics. On X, psychedelics company Cybin created a graphic from a screenshot of Makary’s interview, alongside a quote from their CEO Doug Drysdale: “It is gratifying that the US FDA Commissioner Makary shares our belief in the potential therapeutic value of these innovative treatments.” Florian Brand, CEO of psychedelics company atai, also highlighted Makary’s remarks, calling it “big news” that indicates “the clearest public signal yet that the FDA is ready to act fast [on psychedelics] —if the data supports it.” (atai’s largest investor, Christian Angermayer, posted the same line, verbatim, on LinkedIn.)
Connecticut legislators narrowly pass decrim bill
On Tuesday, Connecticut legislators narrowly passed House Bill 7065 — the vote was 74 to 65. The bill proposes changes to the penalties for possession of less than half an ounce of psilocybin mushrooms. Per the bill, psilocybin possession would be a class A misdemeanor subject to a fine between $150 and $500, without the possibility of jail time.
Similar bills have been introduced in the state over the past two years, but did not pass. This most recent bill still faces uncertainty as it heads to Governor Ned Lamont’s desk; last year, a spokesperson for the governor told the Hartford Courant that “the governor has concerns about broad decriminalization of mushrooms.”
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DEA grants right to use ayahuasca to Spokane, WA church
Last weekend, the Church of Gaia, an ayahuasca church in Spokane, Washington, announced that it had received a religious exemption from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency to legally obtain and use ayahuasca in their religious ceremonies.
Ayahuasca contains DMT, which remains federally illegal per the U.S.’s Controlled Substances Act (CSA). But a case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2006 determined that per the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), members of a church founded in Brazil called União do Vegetal (UDV) could use the substance. Three years after that case, the DEA created a way for churches to petition for exemptions to the CSA. In the years since, many churches whose members use psychedelics as sacraments have operated quietly, hoping to avoid federal prosecution, while others have petitioned the DEA without success. According to a report from the Government Accountability Office that we reported on last June, the DEA received 24 RFRA exemption petitions between 2016 and 2024, but none of them had been granted. Several churches withdrew their petitions after years of silence from the DEA.
“DEA settlements and agreements are not usually made public and are often protected by confidentiality agreements,” attorney Jason Adelstone wrote in a blog post on the recent Church of Gaia decision. (The DEA did not respond to our request to confirm whether or not the church was indeed granted an exemption. We also reached out to the Church of Gaia for information about the decision, but as of press time, their legal team was still determining what information they were able to share.) “While Gaia’s exemption is a historic development, and quite worthy of celebration, it also highlights a continuing challenge – the lack of transparency in DEA decision-making,” wrote Adelstone.
New EU funding for psychedelics research
On Monday, the European Cooperation in Science & Technology group (COST) announced 70 new projects that the consortium will support. One of the projects proposes studying psychedelics, with the aim of creating large collaborations, multi-center academic collaborations, and open access data; researchers in over 20 EU countries collaborated to submit the proposal. According to COST, approved projects are funded at roughly €125,000 ($141,600) the first year and €150,000 ($170,000) annually for another three years.
In 2015, Johns Hopkins researchers Roland Griffiths began a study where religious leaders underwent two psilocybin dosing sessions. In the New Yorker this week, author Michael Pollan describes what they experienced: many saw God and some even felt moved to start psychedelic religious organizations. Nearly a decade later, the paper with these findings has still not been published, in part due to ethical concerns reported to the Johns Hopkins and New York University Institutional Review Boards. The paper was slated to be published this week but as of press time, it has not yet been published.
Former followers of Roger Bardales, a Shipibo shaman turned Peruvian pop star, allege he used psychedelics to “to hypnotize followers into emptying their bank accounts and performing sex acts,” reports a VICE article by journalist Mattha Busby, a former Ferriss-UC Berkeley Psychedelic Journalism fellow.
Many talk about the so-called psychedelic renaissance as an opportunity for healing, but it might only serve to reinforce existing power structures and inequities, write researchers Kevin Walby and Jamie Brownlee in a new piece in The Conversation.
Popular Mechanics reports on a 2024 paper suggesting individuals’ microbiomes could in part predict how effective psychedelics treatments will be.
Canadian patients are using marijuana-assisted therapy as a mental health treatment — “but therapists and researchers warn this approach is not suitable — or safe — for everyone, and research is still in its infancy,” reports CBC.
The Wall Street Journal profiles congressman Morgan Luttrell (TX-R), a former Navy SEAL, about his experience using ibogaine and why he supports psychedelic therapy.
Academic publisher Elsevier is launching a new journal called Psychedelics, which “aspires to be an experiment in interdisciplinarity, particularly welcoming submissions that generate dialogue in psychedelic research,” write its new co-Editors-in-Chief, Alan K. Davis and Tehseen Noorani. (Davis is the director of the Center for Psychedelic Drug Research and Education at The Ohio State University, and Noorani studies psychedelics at the University of Auckland.)
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