What will a Trump administration do with psychedelics?

It was a very daunting election outcome and this week's Microdose notes: "As Donald Trump prepares to take office in January, psychedelics are likely to remain a popular issue among members of his inner circle. According to Politico, presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed last week that Trump promised him “control of the public health agencies, which are HHS and its sub-agencies, CDC, FDA, NIH, and a few others.” (Trump’s campaign communications director told Politico that “formal discussions of who will serve” in a Trump administration are “premature.”) In a post on X two weeks ago, Kennedy wrote that the “FDA’s war on public health is about to end,” after which he included a long list of things he believes the agency has suppressed. First on the list: psychedelics. He went on to include raw milk, sunshine, exercise, and ivermectin, a veterinary antiparasitic medication that some have used after contracting COVID-19, despite no evidence of its efficacy in treating COVID.  While Trump has not directly addressed his stance on psychedelics, vice president-elect J.D. Vance appeared on podcaster Joe Rogan’s show last week, where the two discussed the possibility of using psychedelics to treat veterans. In their conversation, Rogan summarized the FDA’s rejection of MDMA and mentioned anecdotes of veterans who had found relief in trying psilocybin. “This is the first time I’ve heard about this,” Vance claimed. He later summarized his attitude towards the issue by saying that he believed “we should be doing whatever we can” to “help veterans get the mental health treatment they need.” 

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