Legislative updates in Mississippi, West Virginia, Oregon, and New Hampshire; Fast-tracked federal approval of Compass's synthetic psilocybin was vetoed; Federal bill proposes VA study psychedelics
Plus: Definium (formerly MindMed) hit with “trade secret” lawsuit; and an analysis of ibogaine experiences
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.
State legislative updates in Mississippi, West Virginia, Oregon, and New Hampshire
On Tuesday, Mississippi’s ibogaine bill, SB 2561, failed to advance out of the state Senate’s Public Health and Welfare Committee. (Tuesday, February 3 was the deadline for the House and Senate to advance bills.) Last week, it appeared the bill had momentum after the state House voted 111-1 to pass it. The legislation was one of several ibogaine bills championed by the advocacy group Americans for Ibogaine. It proposed using a portion of the state’s opioid settlement funds, which are expected to total around $421 million over the next 15 years, to study ibogaine.
A similar bill in West Virginia, HB 4626, passed the house last Thursday 96-0. It also proposes funding ibogaine research but through a public-private partnership program. The bill is now with the Senate Health and Human Resources Committee.
On Monday, Oregon legislators introduced HB 4110, a bill that would amend state law to allow physicians to provide ibogaine to patients for PTSD, major depressive disorder, an anxiety disorder, or a substance use disorder. The bill proposes exempting this prescribed use of ibogaine from the definition of “controlled substance” defined by Oregon state law. States generally adopt federal controlled substance guidelines, but some, like Oregon, have made state-specific special exceptions; Oregon has carved out different state policies for psilocybin and cannabis. It now heads to the House Behavioral Health Committee.
The New Hampshire house has rejected one psilocybin bill while advancing another. HB 1796 and HB 1809 both propose a medical psilocybin program run by the state’s Department of Health and Human Services, but the former bill, the one that failed, includes much more detail about the potential program’s parameters, laying out particulars about licensing psilocybin manufacturers and testing products, education requirements for qualified medical providers, and establishing a team of five new employees to run the program. New Hampshire’s House Health, Human Services, and Elderly Affairs Committee voted 11-7 to kill the bill. Meanwhile HB 1809, which has far fewer details — it only says that the health department will develop rules later — passed the same committee 18 to 0.
Fast-tracked federal approval of Compass’s synthetic psilocybin was vetoed
On Wednesday, STAT reported that several anonymous sources told them that the Trump Administration vetoed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s suggestion to fast-track Compass Pathways’ drug COMP360 for the treatment of depression. COMP360 is a synthetic formulation of psilocybin.
In July 2025, the FDA began accepting applications for a program called the Commissioner’s National Priority Vouchers; through the program, companies would receive accelerated approval — within 1-2 months — of any drugs that addressed “a large unmet medical need.” At the time, no psychedelic companies stated their intention to apply for the program. The FDA announced it had chosen nine companies for the vouchers in October, including a company called Phlow, which aims to establish a ketamine supply chain in the U.S. According to STAT’s reporting, Compass was meant to be the tenth company; FDA commissioner Marty Makary presented this list of companies to officials in the Health and Human Services Department, who vetoed the FDA’s inclusion of Compass.
STAT did not specifically name which officials were involved in the decision, only referring to them as Makary’s “superiors.” (The FDA commissioner reports directly to the Secretary of HHS, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) “For some advocates of psychedelic medicines, the last-minute roadblock also underlines an emerging disconnect between HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vocal proponent of the field, and other factions of the administration,” STAT reports. It also underscores concerns that the voucher program could be used as a way for high-level politicians or drug companies to interfere with the FDA’s decisions. STAT reported in December that high-level FDA officials have been involved in every part of the voucher program, and “awarded at least one voucher over the concerns of staff.” Additionally, it wrote that the White House “sought to use the FDA program as a bargaining chip, offering the possibility of vouchers to companies like Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk in exchange for lowering the cost of their blockbuster weight loss drugs,” and that likewise, companies have used the program to “exert pressure on the agency.”
Regardless, Compass is widely believed to be the next company to submit a New Drug Application for a psychedelic treatment to the FDA. In November, the company said they’d accelerated the timeline of their commercial launch by 9 to 12 months, which means the FDA could make a decision on COMP360 in 2027.
Want the latest psychedelics news? Subscribe! (It’s free!)
Federal bill proposes VA study psychedelics
In mid January, U.S. Representatives Lou Correa (D-CA) and Jack Bergman (R-MI), co-founders of the Psychedelics Advancing Therapies (PATH) Caucus, introduced H.R. 7091, which directs Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins to “establish an investigational research and extended access treatment program” which would use “innovative treatments and emerging therapies to address conditions with unmet needs.” Those conditions include chronic pain, PTSD, and substance use disorders, and the clinical trials it calls for specifically includes “psychedelic- and entactogenic-assisted therapies.” (MDMA is often classified as an entactogen rather than a psychedelic.) It’s now been referred to the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, where it awaits next actions.
This week, Clearmind Medicine, a psychedelic biotech company, published a statement in support of the bill, calling it “a transformational opportunity for veterans.” Its proprietary drug MEIA, or 5-methoxy-2-aminoindane, is specifically named in the bill alongside ibogaine, ketamine, psilocybin, MDMA, and 5-MeO-DMT.
Definium (formerly MindMed) hit with “trade secret” lawsuit
A Pennsylvania-based company called Signant Health Holding Corp, which specializes in building technology used to run clinical trials, has sued Definium Therapeutics — formerly known as MindMed, a psychedelics biotech company based in New York. Definium, then MindMed, had contracted with Signant to run its Phase 2 trials using their LSD formulation MM120 to treat anxiety and depression. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Delaware, alleges that when Definium contracted with a different company to run its Phase 3 trials, it fed “confidential and trade secret protected” information it had learned from working with Signant.
According to the lawsuit, Todd Solomon, a director at MindMed, worked with former Signant employees and shared information about Signant’s clinical trial design with another company, EMA Wellness, which Definium contracted to run their Phase 3 clinical trials. MindMed “fed those trade secrets to EMA in an effort to shore up EMA’s nascent capabilities and mask EMA’s inability to perform,” the suit alleges. This, Signant alleges, constitutes a violation of trade secret law.
The company announced in January that it was changing its name from MindMed to Definium. In clinical trial results published last fall, its lead drug, a formulation of LSD called MM120, reduced anxiety symptoms.
“We disagree with the claims and will respond through the legal process,” Definium’s vice president of corporate communications Beth Calitri told The Microdose.
An analysis of ibogaine experiences
A great number of bills put forth by the advocacy group Americans for Ibogaine seek provide funding for studying ibogaine as a treatment for veterans’ mental health issues, substance use disorders, and traumatic brain injuries. In a new paper published in npj Mental Health Research, researchers asked 30 veterans open-ended questions about their experiences after taking ibogaine at a 5-day visit to the Ambio Life Treatment Center in Tijuana, Mexico. The authors are all affiliated with Stanford and include the late researcher Nolan Williams, known for his pioneering work on ibogaine.
Many of the veterans interviewed reported re-encountering and reappraising traumatic memories — or as the authors put it: “Traumatic, sometimes previously repressed, experiences replayed with radically altered affect—often suffused with love, forgiveness, and acceptance—leading to catharsis.” Some say they experienced looking at their experiences from outside of themselves, with a “detached, observer-like awareness,” and reconnecting with emotions such as compassion, forgiveness, and love. Some even reported feeling somatic sensations they attributed to being a type of “brain healing.” In the words of one participant, “What was happening in my brain was as if all my neurons and synapses were firing and recharging and healing.” That last idea, in particular, might be a direction for empirical study, the authors say; they theorize that noribogaine, the main metabolite of ibogaine, could elevate serotonin levels and that this increased serotonergic activity could stimulate oxytocin release, leading to feelings of connection.
The non-profit psychedelic advocacy organization MAPS announced it is partnering with Columbia University to study MDMA-assisted couples therapy. The study will not be a clinical trial, and no MDMA will be administered; rather, the researchers will gather survey data from practitioners who have facilitated MDMA-assisted couples sessions.
If alcohol and tobacco are exempt from the Controlled Substances Act, psilocybin — ranked by researchers as having the lowest harm on a list of 20 substances — shouldn’t be a Schedule I drug, argue bioethicist Julia Etkin and UC Berkeley law school’s Vincent Joralemon. In a post on Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School website, they make a surprising but cogent argument for why psilocybin should be regulated as a food, not a drug.
CBS reviews the case of Ameen Alai, who is currently serving a four-year sentence in connection with the death of 54-year old weightlifter Andy Haman, who died after taking ibogaine in Alai’s Colorado basement in 2021.
On Friday, police in Windsor, Ontario raided the psilocybin dispensary FunGuyz for the ninth time, reports the Windsor Star. Police across Canada have been raiding dispensaries like FunGuyz over the last several years, playing a game of whack-a-mole as the dispensaries continue to re-open after raids. But this time, FunGuyz’s owners say they will be closing the location. During the raid, police found not only psilocybin but LSD, DMT, and crystal meth. “Because of what was found in there, we’ve made the decision to close that location now,” the owner told CTV News.
You’re all caught up! We’ll be back in your inbox on Monday with a new issue of 5 Questions.
If you know anyone who might like the latest on psychedelics in their inbox, feel free to forward this to them, or click below.
Got tips? Email us at themicrodose@berkeley.edu.