New Mexico poised to become third state with a regulated psilocybin program; Low doses of LSD for ADHD no more effective than placebo; State bill bonanza continues
Plus: Ukraine Ministry of Health proposes rescheduling psychedelics; and clinician survey highlights barriers to psychedelic-assisted therapies
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.
New Mexico poised to become third state with a regulated psilocybin program
The New Mexico legislature has passed Senate Bill 219, or the Medical Psilocybin Act, which would make it state-legal for clinicians, manufacturers, or patients to grow, prescribe, and use psilocybin for medical purposes, and it would establish a state department and advisory board to create a state medical psilocybin program.
Unlike Colorado’s or Oregon’s programs, the program proposed in New Mexico’s Medical Psilocybin Act would require patients to receive approval from an approved and licensed health care provider before being prescribed psilocybin. Qualifying conditions for a referral include treatment-resistant depression, PTSD, substance use disorder, conditions requiring end of life care, and “other conditions approved by the department.” The bill also defines the term “psilocybin” as meaning both to the naturally occurring psychedelic compound 4-PO-DMT found in mushrooms and its metabolite psilocin, “but does not include synthetic or synthetic analogs of psilocybin,” such as those being developed by psychedelics companies like Compass and Atai. (If the U.S. Food and Drug Administration were to eventually approve lab-made, synthetic psilocybin or a psilocybin analog, that approval would be for the use of synthetic psilocybin for a specific indication, rather than the wide array of qualifying conditions specified by this bill.)
The bill passed the New Mexico State Senate last week 33-4, and on Tuesday, the State House passed it 56-8. It now heads to Governor Michelle Grisham’s desk. If approved, the state’s Department of Health would provide $2 million from its general funds, and the program would begin by the end of 2027.
Low doses of LSD for ADHD no more effective than placebo
Small amounts of LSD can reduce ADHD symptoms, according to a new clinical trial published in JAMA Psychiatry — but so can a placebo. In the study, run by researchers at the University of Basel in Switzerland, 27 participants received 20 micrograms (μg) of LSD twice a week for six weeks, while 26 participants received a placebo over that same time. (“Controlled studies in healthy participants have reported that perceptual threshold doses of LSD are around 10 μg of LSD,” the study’s authors write. This study’s 20 μg dose would likely produce mild effects, they say, and is “at the upper end of the microdosing range and might rather be considered a low dose instead.”) Overall, both groups exhibited a significant decrease in ADHD symptoms, but there was no statistically significant difference in symptoms between the group that received LSD and the one that took the placebo.
Previous research on microdosing has reported mixed results: while some studies using participant self-report and self-dosing have suggested microdosing psilocybin and LSD can boost mood and lower anxiety and depression symptoms, others have found it doesn’t significantly change mood or cognition, relative to placebo. The present study further complicates the inconsistent evidence and suggests that expectation may play a role: the majority of participants, including those who received a placebo, believed they had been given LSD, and those that believed this were more likely to show improvements in the ADHD scores than those who believed they had been given a placebo. The discrepancy between this study’s findings and others in which microdosers showed significant improvement in mental health symptoms “underscores the need for randomized placebo-controlled trials,” they conclude.
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State bill bonanza continues
Idaho’s legislature just passed House Joint Resolution 4, which amends the state constitution such that only the legislature can create policy related to marijuana, narcotics, or other psychoactive substances. This would eliminate the possibility that voters could pass ballot initiatives related to controlled substances in the way that Oregon and Colorado voters passed state-regulated psilocybin programs. The resolution now heads to Governor Brad Little; if Little signs the bill, Idahoans will vote on the amendment during the next general election.
Arizona’s House voted 36-22 to advance House Bill 2871, which would designate $10 million from the state’s general fund to study ibogaine in the treatment of conditions including traumatic brain injury and PTSD. The bill is now with the Arizona State Senate.
Last Friday, Texas legislators introduced Senate Bill 3005 (and its companion in the House, HB 4014), which proposes studying the use of MDMA, psilocybin, and ketamine in treating mental health conditions including PTSD and depression. Researchers at Baylor College and UT Austin’s Center for Psychedelic Research and Therapy would conduct the study, and the Department of State Health Services would submit a report by the end of 2026 about its results as well as recommendations to the state on how to implement psychedelic-assisted therapies.
Hawaii’s House Committee on Health & Homelessness has voted to pass Senate Bill 1042, which creates a two-year pilot program to support research on “emerging therapies,” which includes psychedelic substances undergoing clinical trials. The bill originally proposed creating a “special fund” to support research; that version was passed by the state senate in late February, but the house committee amended the bill to instead fund a two-year pilot program.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Health proposes rescheduling psychedelics for research
This week, the Ukrainian Ministry of Health proposed rescheduling psilocybin, psilocin, LSD, 5-MeO-DMT, MDMA, ibogaine, and DMT to allow the substances to be used in scientific research. According to new documents published by the Ministry of Health (translated into English with the help of Google), Ukraine currently does not have a legal mechanism for using narcotic or psychotropic substances in research or education. This resolution “will stimulate the development of science (medicine, psychopharmacology, biochemistry, psychophysiology, etc.) and international scientific cooperation,” Minister of Health Viktor Liashko writes.
Groups such as the Ukranian Psychedelic Research Association, Heal Ukraine Trauma, and MAPS have been advocating for psychedelic-assisted therapies as a way of treating people who have been harmed by the Russia-Ukraine war. Tadeusz Hawrot, founder of the Psychedelic Access and Research European Alliance (PAREA), helped connect the Ukraine Ministry of Health with Ukrainian advocates, and heralded the Ministry of Health’s proposal as a step in the right direction. “Ukraine has long lacked a proper legislative framework for psychedelic research due to outdated and overly restrictive laws inherited from the Soviet era,” Hawrot told The Microdose. “The draft resolution proposes regulating the use of psychoactive substances for scientific, educational, and medical purposes, finally unlocking much-needed scientific research—especially for veterans coping with PTSD.”
Clinician survey highlights barriers to adopting psychedelic-assisted therapies
A new survey of mental health providers suggests that while enthusiasm about adopting psychedelic-assisted therapies is high, providers are concerned about logistical challenges like legal barriers and insurance coverage.
The study, conducted by mental health advocacy group BrainFutures and health economist group the UC Berkeley Collaborative for the Economics of Psychedelics, interviewed 20 clinicians about their plans to offer psychedelic-assisted therapy, or PAT, should it be approved by the FDA. The majority (13 out of 20) said yes; seven respondents said they already provide ketamine-assisted therapy at their practice, but it was unclear from the results whether those respondents were among the 13 that indicated they planned to offer PAT. However, only half the respondents said they thought PAT would be profitable; when asked to rate the likelihood that insurance would cover the therapies on a scale of 1-5, 70% of respondents replied with a 1, 2, or 3, suggesting low confidence. Instead, most providers expect clients will pay out of pocket. “For the compounds closest to FDA approval, MDMA and psilocybin, it is hypothesized that total treatment costs will exceed $10,000 dollars per patient,” the report’s authors write. “At these prices, without health insurance coverage, psychedelic therapies will only be accessible to socioeconomically advantaged populations, extending existing unequal access into these new mental health treatments.”
Walter Reed National Military Medical Center confirmed to The Military Times that it will receive one of two $4.9 million Department of Defense grants to study MDMA. (At SXSW last week, MAPS founder Rick Doblin mentioned Major Aaron Wolfgang, Chief of Inpatient Psychiatry at the U.S. Army and the study’s lead author, as a collaborator.)
Dr. Bronner’s announced this week that a wrongful death lawsuit filed against the company and several employees by the family of late employee Denise Lozano has been amicably resolved. (The Lozano family’s lawyer says the case against Christian Allbert, who allegedly gave Lozano a ketamine massage shortly before Lozano died, is ongoing.)
Colorado’s first psilocybin businesses could include yoga, a place for microdosing, or even a coffee shop, reports The Denver Post’s Tiney Ricciardi.
On the Goop podcast, brand creator and actress Gwyneth Paltrow discusses how MDMA changed her relationship with her mother while interviewing author Amy Griffin about her new book, The Tell.*
For Slate, journalist Katie MacBride critiques a New York Times piece about the psychedelic watchdog group Psymposia’s role in the FDA’s decision not to approve Lykos’s new drug application for the use of MDMA in treating PTSD. Psymposia also recently issued a statement in response to the New York Times piece.
The Government Accountability Office published a two-page primer on the medical use of psychedelics, concluding that “researchers struggle to distinguish genuine effects of psychedelics from the placebo effect,” and that “the medical use of psychedelics raises questions for policymakers about how to balance potential benefits with research limitations and patient safety.”
The Washingtonian reports on a new eight-course meal at the restaurant Sagrada Mia designed “to evoke the experience of psychedelic mushrooms—but without the magic mushrooms” through evoking elements of traditional psychedelic ceremonies. In psychedelics magazine DoubleBlind’s newsletter The Drop In, editor Mary Carreon asks: “Is Sagrada Mia genuinely honoring the Indigenous traditions it draws from, or just capitalizing on them?”
The BBC reports that UK drag star The Vivienne has died from “a cardiac arrest caused by the effects of taking ketamine,” according to the performer’s family.
An Australian spiritual healer was fined $3000 for trafficking psilocybin. Deanne Mathews was initially charged with the death of Rachael Dixon, who died at Mathews’s 2024 retreat, but there was no evidence psilocybin caused Dixon’s death, according to The Guardian.
The Phoenix New Times interviews former U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema about why she’s been testifying in the Arizona legislature in support of House Bill 2871, which would designate $10 million in state funds for ibogaine research.
Psychedelic Alpha’s Josh Hardman recaps South by Southwest.
*Correction: We initially misstated the source of this discussion. Paltrow’s admission happened on the Goop podcast, not The Tell; The Tell is the name of author Amy Griffin’s book. Thanks to our eagle-eyed reader Jen for catching our Goop goof.
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