University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) will observe human subjects in a study to determine if psilocybin, the active compound in magic mushrooms.The study marks UC Berkeley’s first study involving human subjects with a Schedule I substance—drugs with no currently accepted medical value. 

The study will examine how psilocybin changes the way our brain interprets information that we see and pushes us out of our normal state of mind. The UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics (BCSP) is launching a new study designed to reveal the mechanisms behind how psychedelics shape human perception. 

In the experiment, healthy human participants will ingest psilocybin, a compound found in psychedelic mushrooms. All the while, researchers will observe how their brains light up. Each participant will then perform simple perceptual tasks while their visual cortex is monitored using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). 

“We have this incredible opportunity to characterize the psychedelic experience in real time—while it’s happening—using modern neuroimaging methods,” Michael Silver, director of the BCSP and the study’s leader, told Berkeley News. “Understanding the actions of psychedelics at a neuroscientific level will generate insights into how they’re working as medicines and will hopefully help us develop more effective treatments for mental health disorders. It will also shed light on some of the fundamental mysteries of the human brain, mind and consciousness and how they relate to each other.”

Before this study, UC Berkeley researchers had to rely on animal subjects, typically mouse models, in order to study psilocybin as a Schedule I substance. Going beyond that usually requires DEA approvals.

For the BCSP, they had to work for years to acquire federal, state, and campus-level regulatory approvals in order to use psilocybin, and they must follow stringent rules for handling of it.

How Psilocybin Shapes the Way We Perceive Visual Information

Silver explained to Berkeley News in detail what excites him about the way psilocybin changes the way we see and process visual information.

Silver explained that our retina pick up about as much info and/or resolution as a 2007 camera—but our brains fill in the blanks, providing rich detail. “The way that we perceive the world is very unlike a video camera,” Silver said. “While a camera just passively records whatever comes through the lens, our brain takes that sensory information from the eyes and combines it with previous experiences to generate our conscious experience of the world. We make implicit assumptions—for example, that objects that are in one place tend to stay in one place, or that objects that are moving tend to continue moving along that trajectory—to help construct our perceptions.”

“Our area of interest is the visual system in the brain,” Silver told CBS News. “Psychedelics are a wonderful tool for understanding this.”

UC Berkeley’s Center for the Science of Psychedelics is underway and staff are recruiting volunteers, center director and UC Berkeley professor Michael Silver said.

“My love is science, not the administrative part of it,” Silver said. “I understand the importance of that, but the reason I am personally motivated to do this is to learn about the brain and to learn about the visual system and how we create conscious experience.”

“Visual priors” help define how our brain interprets information we see. In the new experiment supported by the BCSP, researchers will observe how psilocybin impacts visual perception and how these perceptions are generated in the brain. They plan to test a hypothesis known as REBUS, or relaxed beliefs under psychedelics, which proposes that psychedelics work by “relaxing” assumptions, so that our perceptions are shaped less by visual priors and more by raw sensory information. 

Psychedelic-assisted therapy is gaining traction because of the ability of psychedelics to push people out of mental patterns.

“If you think about the disorders where we have the best evidence that psychedelics can be a useful therapy, including PTSD, depression, anxiety and various substance use disorders, they often involve a maladaptive prior or belief, such as a negative self-image,” Silver said. “The REBUS theory proposes that psychedelic-assisted therapy works by reducing the influence of these priors, followed by construction of healthier priors through psychotherapy.”

The team hopes that the information they glean will help to better understand how our minds perceive information and how psilocybin impacts those abilities.

“We know a great deal about the different structures and neural types in the visual system, and as a result, we have some understanding of what visual priors and sensory information look like in the brain, and how they interact with each other,” Silver said. “And so, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we can test this theory in a very rigorous way.”

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The University of California, Berkeley (UCB) recently published a scientific brief in February regarding illegal water use for cannabis plants.

Entitled “Water Use: Cannabis in Context,” the brief was conducted by individuals at the Berkeley Cannabis Research Center, which is part of the College of Environmental Science Policy & Management. The Cannabis Research Center has been reviewing cannabis water use since 2017, and the most recent brief is split into four sections posed with a question.

First, “How much water does cannabis use relative to stream flow?” explains that cannabis water use in regions along the Northern California coast and semi-inland areas (primarily Humboldt and Mendocino County) represents a “small fraction” of surface water supplies year-round, and especially during the months of July, August, and September. However, cannabis grows aren’t spread out evenly amongst these areas, with many farms gathered near one another. In those areas, “cannabis water demand represents >10% of available supplies during the dry season.” Researchers also make an important note that the watershed samples they refer to include demand mainly from unlicensed farms.

The researcher’s second section addresses the comparison between water demand between unlicensed versus licensed farms. “Unlicensed cannabis accounts for significantly more cultivated area than licensed cannabis farming and therefore has a much larger water demand footprint,” researchers explained. “Furthermore, because unlicensed cannabis farms often have little to no water storage on-site, water is extracted from watersheds on demand, which tends to peak in August.”

Ultimately, unlicensed farms consume much more than licensed farms throughout the year. “Water demand for unlicensed cultivation therefore exceeds that of licensed cultivation to an even greater extent in the driest time of year when stream flow is lowest,” the authors stated, recommending that incentives be provided for licensed farmers to be able to obtain or retain their existing licenses while “increasing off-site stream storage” to use as irrigation during the summer months.

The third section explores how much residents in Humboldt and Mendocino Counties consume in comparison to the amount of water that licensed grows utilize. Researchers studied 91 watersheds and found that resident’s demand for water usage far exceeded that of licensed cultivators by 97%. “On average, licensed cannabis farm demands are one-tenth the amount of water as residential demand,” the brief states. “Water demands for other forms of agriculture in the region far exceed those of cannabis and residential use.”

Finally, the last section examined water used licensed cannabis grows and found that those cultivation sites only used 4% or less of streamflow in the month of August, some even without additional water storage. “If licensed cannabis farms had enough water storage capacity to accommodate at least half of their annual water demand, there would be no watersheds among those sampled exceeding 2% of their estimated streamflow availability,” the authors concluded. “If licensed cannabis farms had storage capacity equivalent to their annual water demand, licensed cultivation would not require more than 1% of available flow in any sampled watershed.”

The release of this brief is well-timed to educate voters as spring approaches, which is also when they will have the opportunity to choose, approve or reject the Humboldt Cannabis Reform Initiative (HCRI) which will appear as Measure A on the upcoming ballot. If approved, it would severely hinder local growers by banning them from making any changes to their farms. A report analyzing the HCRI was prepared for Humboldt County Board of Supervisors by the Humboldt County Planning Department in March 2023, explaining the harms of such a measure. “HCRI has been written to effectively discourage existing permit holders from modifying their permits in any way,” the report stated. “This includes adding infrastructure intended for environmental protections or modification of activities or site configuration to adapt to the evolving industry. These restrictions affect the smallest of farms permitted in Humboldt County to the largest cultivation sites.” 

More recently, former Board of Supervisors member Mark Lovelace, who has spent the past seven years advising other California counties and cities on cannabis regulations, wrote an op-ed for Times Standard urging voters to vote no on Measure A. “Based on my professional analysis, I believe that Measure A will deal a devastating blow to the small cannabis businesses it purports to want to help,” Lovelace wrote. “The measure will impose an unrealistically small limit on the size of any new cannabis farms and will deny even the smallest ‘craft’ farmers any opportunity to grow or adapt their operations within Humboldt County. With cannabis prices continuing to fall, small farmers will be assured of making less money every year until they are no longer viable.”

Lovelace described the measure as “grossly uninformed and demonstrates a deep lack of understanding of the cannabis industry and basic economics.” Measure A cites any grow larger than 10,000 square feet (which he describes as slightly larger than the average suburban lot), is a “large grow.” Additionally, the average size of all licensed Californian cultivator lots are more than 27,000 square feet, 93 cultivators are larger than 100,000 square feet, and nine include more than one million square feet.

In addition to other important points of defense of local cannabis growers, Lovelace summarizes the effect that Measure A may have on small cultivators. “Measure A would put Humboldt County’s small cannabis farms at an extreme disadvantage against large growers elsewhere in the state, rendering them largely unviable in an increasingly competitive industry. I urge Humboldt County’s voters to vote NO on Measure A,” Lovelace concluded.

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Last month, the university’s Center for the Science of Psychedelics launched a free, online course titled “Psychedelics and the Mind.” The launch of the course marks another expansion of the Center, which itself launched three years ago.

According to The Daily Californian, the course “will be taught by David Presti, neurobiology professor and one of [Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics] founders.” It will be available for free due to the largess of the Steve and Alexandra Cohen Foundation. 

Steve Cohen, the billionaire owner of the New York Mets, is a longtime advocate of psychedelic research and therapy. In June, the foundation offered a $5 million grant to MAPS, or the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelics Studies, a nonprofit dedicated to researching the potential of psychedelic drugs for medical use.

Imran Khan, the executive director of the Center for the Science of Psychedelics, said that the newly launched course is “an amazing thing,” calling Presti “a legend at Berkeley.”

“When I tell people what I do for a living, they often first respond by telling me how much they loved learning from David in person many years ago. What we’ve done is convert that class into a high-quality multimedia and interactive online version available worldwide for free. It’s a university-level course on the history and science, as we know it, about psychedelics,” Khan said in an interview with the university. 

According to Khan, the course might also be wholly unique.

“As far as we’re aware, there’s no other course like Psychedelics and the Mind that’s comprehensive, free and focused on psychedelic science. It feels like a uniquely Berkeley thing to be able to offer,” Khan said. “We want it to be accessible to as many people as possible, so we plan to continue promoting it. But we also want it to be a baseline so that we can then launch further courses. For example, we’re interested in explaining the medical side of psychedelics, or the connection between psychedelics and particular communities — whether that’s certain racial groups, veterans or people who come from specific professions who want to understand the nature and implications of psychedelics.”

“There’s tremendous potential there for us to continue being that link between what’s happening in research and practice and meeting the need and the desire to know more in the future,” Khan added.

University of California, Berkeley launched the Center for the Science of Psychedelics in September of 2020 thanks to $1.25 million in seed funding from an anonymous donor.

“There’s never been a better time to start a center like this,” Presti said at the time. “The renewal of basic and clinical science with psychedelics has catalyzed interest among many people.”

The Center also counts bestselling author Michael Pollan as one of its co-founders. Pollan’s 2018 book “How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression and Transcendence” was cited as “one of the inspirations for the center.”

“We’re really interested in what psychedelics can teach us about consciousness, perception, creativity and learning,” Pollan said at the time.

“Psychedelics have a particular value later in life, because that is when you are most stuck in your patterns. They give you the ability to shake them loose,” he added.

In June, the Center released a first-of-its-kind poll that showed a significant majority of Americans supporting therapeutic access to psychedelics.

“More than six out of 10 (61%) American registered voters support legalizing regulated therapeutic access to psychedelics, including 35% who report ‘strong’ support,” the university wrote in a press release detailing the poll’s results. “In addition, more than three-quarters of voters (78%) support making it easier for researchers to study psychedelic substances. Almost half (49%) support removing criminal penalties for personal use and possession.”

Khan said at the time that the poll provided “the first clear picture we have of what the American public think and feel about psychedelics.”

“The Berkeley Psychedelics Survey shows that the majority of American voters are interested in, and supportive of, the field. They want fewer barriers to research for scientists, and they want regulated, therapeutic access for the public,” Khan said. “Amidst all the stigma and the hype about these powerful substances, it’s vital that researchers, policymakers, and practitioners can understand and respond to the public’s hopes and fears. We’re excited to reveal the full results of the Berkeley Psychedelics Survey in the coming weeks.”

In the interview with the university published late last month, Khan said that the future of psychedelics in the U.S. remains unknown.

“We’re near the beginning of a journey with psychedelics. These substances have been used for decades, centuries and millennia, in some contexts, and there’s now been this fairly recent resurgence in popular, cultural and research interest in them. We’re so near the beginning of an inquiry that I hope is going to last many more decades. There are questions that we don’t even know enough to ask, at this stage,” Khan said.

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City officials in Berkeley, California have reportedly moved to decriminalize both psilocybin mushrooms and ayahuasca.

According to Psychedelic Spotlight, the city council there “unanimously” approved a measure to “officially deprioritize arrests for possession and use of psilocybin and ayahuasca…creating a new paradigm as dozens of cities across the United States move to recognize these naturally-occurring compounds’ mental health potential.”

SFGATE reported last week that the city council was slated to vote on the measure at Tuesday’s meeting.

The road to this psychedelic drug reform effort began in November, when the Berkeley City Council said that it would consider the measure.

The original resolution sought to decriminalize a host of psychedelics; along with psilocybin and ayahuasca, it also would have applied to LSD.

The measure that was ultimately approved on Tuesday was titled: “Resolution Supporting Entheogenic Plant Practices and Declaring that the Investigation and Arrest of Individuals Involved with the Adult Use of Entheogenic Plants on the Federal Schedule 1 List Be Amongst the Lowest Priority for the City of Berkeley.” 

It states that “the City of Berkeley wishes to declare its desire not to expend City resources in any investigation, detention, arrest, or prosecution arising out of alleged violations of state and federal law regarding the use of Entheogenic Plants,” and declares “that it shall be the policy of the City of Berkeley that no department, agency, board, commission, officer or employee of the city, including without limitation, Berkeley Police Department personnel, shall use any city funds or resources to assist in the enforcement of laws imposing criminal penalties for the use and possession of Entheogenic Plants by adults of at least 21 years of age.”

“For the purposes of this resolution, Entheogenic Plants are defined as plants and natural sources such as mushrooms, cacti, iboga containing plants and/or extracted combinations of plants similar to ayahuasca; and limited to those containing the following types of compounds: indole amines, tryptamines, phenethylamines,” the resolution continues.

The measure was pushed by a grassroots group called Bay Staters for Natural Medicine, which “led the effort to decriminalize six Massachusetts communities including Cambridge and Salem,” according to the outlet.

“Living in Berkeley, I tried psilocybin mushrooms for the first time with trusted friends. These plant medicines helped me work through trauma and open my heart to other people for the first time,” James Davis, cofounder of Bay Staters for Natural Medicine, told Psychedelic Spotlight. “Even so, this measure strikes the right balance by acknowledging that this should be something people research cautiously for their own wellbeing. Not something that should be sold and traded like candy, as has unfortunately happened in Oakland, nor commercialized for massive profits like in Oregon and Colorado.”

While this reform effort launched in earnest back in the fall, SFGATE notes that “Berkeley has been considering psychedelic reform since at least 2019, but the measure stalled during the COVID-19 pandemic because of disagreements over how to handle synthetic psychedelics.”

“Cities across the country have moved to reduce criminal penalties for using and distributing psychedelic drugs in recent years, as advocates argue that criminalization of drugs is not an effective way to regulate these substances,” the outlet reported. “The Bay Area has been a leader in the psychedelic reform movement, with Oakland, San Francisco and Santa Cruz passing similar measures that make possession of psychedelics a lower priority for law enforcement.”

Berkeley has been in the vanguard of other drug reform efforts, with the city council voting in 2020 to allow cannabis consumption lounges and marijuana delivery.

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A poll from the University of California, Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics (BCSP) shows new data regarding American support of legal psychedelic therapy. The poll results were published online on June 20 in what the university calls the “first-ever Berkeley Survey,” which was also presented at the Psychedelic Science 2023 Conference in Denver, Colorado.

“More than six out of 10 (61%) American registered voters support legalizing regulated therapeutic access to psychedelics, including 35% who report ‘strong’ support,” UC Berkeley wrote in a press release regarding the poll. “In addition, more than three-quarters of voters (78%) support making it easier for researchers to study psychedelic substances. Almost half (49%) support removing criminal penalties for personal use and possession.”

Poll participants were asked to answer “support,” “oppose,” or “other” to two questions. First, they were asked what their response is to “creating a regulated legal framework for the therapeutic use of psychedelics.” Second, they were asked their opinion on “Obtaining FDA approval so that people can access psychedelics by prescription.”

The data is the result of “new longitudinal public opinion research project” conducted by university researchers, which tracks public beliefs related to psychedelic substance research, policy and cultural events. According to BCSP’s Executive Director Imran Khan, this data is just the beginning. “This is the first clear picture we have of what the American public think and feel about psychedelics. The Berkeley Psychedelics Survey shows that the majority of American voters are interested in, and supportive of, the field. They want fewer barriers to research for scientists, and they want regulated, therapeutic access for the public,” Khan said. “Amidst all the stigma and the hype about these powerful substances, it’s vital that researchers, policymakers, and practitioners can understand and respond to the public’s hopes and fears. We’re excited to reveal the full results of the Berkeley Psychedelics Survey in the coming weeks.”

Both Khan, as well as Berkeley Psychedelics Survey project lead, Taylor West, previewed the data at the Psychedelic Science 2023 Conference. “The level of national support for psychedelics policy reform far exceeded my expectations. Clearly much of the news around promising research and mental health results has begun breaking through to the general public,” West said on the stage.

The survey in its entirety will be published on July 12 in an online presentation by BCSP co-founder Michael Pollan, as well as Khan and West. Those interested in the digital presentation can register here.

On June 26, the BCSP announced on its Twitter page that it was be hosting a psychedelics course through the UC Berkeley Extension through the edX platform. The course, called “Psychedelics and The Mind, begins on August 1 and is taught by UC Berkeley Professor of Neurobiology David Presti. “In becoming a more informed citizen vis-à-vis psychedelics, you will have an opportunity to become better acquainted with your own brain and nervous system, understand the science related to organisms and molecules having psychedelic properties, gain historical and contemporary context surrounding factors that influence public opinion and law, and appreciate something of the rapidly evolving contemporary clinical research with these materials,” the course information states.

A brief look at the syllabus shows course coverage of “Foundational Concepts in the Neurobiology of Psychedelics” including substances such as LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, sacred cacti and mescaline, DMT, ayahuasca, and Amazonian snuffs, MDMA, ketamine, and nitrous oxide. To cover this wide variety of topics, Presti includes expert sources such as “Raquel Bennett, Susana Bustos, Gül Dölen, Andrea Gomez, Ayize Jama-Everett, Bob Jesse, Dacher Keltner, Mariavittoria Mangini, Jennifer Mitchell, Michael Pollan, Sylvestre Quevedo, and Forrest Tahdooahnippah.”

In another first for psychedelics, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently issued its first guidance for clinical studies on psychedelics on June 23. Tiffany Farchione, M.D., director of the Division of Psychiatry in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, released a statement about the agency’s recommendations for psychedelic study. “Psychedelic drugs show initial promise as potential treatments for mood, anxiety and substance use disorders. However, these are still investigational products. Sponsors evaluating the therapeutic potential of these drugs should consider their unique characteristics when designing clinical studies,” Farchione said. “By publishing this draft guidance, the FDA hopes to outline the challenges inherent in designing psychedelic drug development programs and provide information on how to address these challenges. The goal is to help researchers design studies that will yield interpretable results that will be capable of supporting future drug applications.”

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The California Department of Cannabis Control (DCC) granted $19,942,918 to 16 academic institutions with plans to research cannabis on April 26. The grants will be dedicated to research initiatives exploring the effectiveness of cannabis on “mental health of young people, novel cannabinoids like Delta-8 and Delta-10 THC, and a first-of-its kind study of California’s legacy cannabis genetics, intended to preserve the history, value, and diversity of the communities that steward them,” a press release stated.

According to DCC chief deputy director Rasha Salama, the goal is to have these particular initiatives lead the way in cannabis studies. “It is the Department’s aspiration that these studies will advance the body of scientific research, further our understanding of cannabis, and aid to the continued development and refinement of the legal framework,” said Salama. “These studies will provide valuable insights on topics of interest to California’s consumers, businesses, and policy makers and the Department looks forward to sharing them once they are completed.”

Grants were awarded to institutions in six categories, including cannabis potency, medicinal use of cannabis, health of the cannabis industry, monopolies and unfair competition, California legacy genetics and genetic sequencing, and “other” topics. A total of 98 proposals were considered, and 16 were chosen from that pool based on “strong scientific methodology, their ability to provide useful information for policymaking, their advancement of public understanding of cannabis, and their potential to generate foundational research that will support exponential future knowledge.”

The institution that received the highest grant amount of funds was Cal Poly Humboldt with $2,699,178, which will be sued to tackle the topic of “Legacy Cannabis Genetics: People and Their Plants, a Community-Driven Study.” 

According to a press release, a nonprofit organization called Origins Council and the Cannabis Equity Policy Council is partnering with the Cal Poly Humboldt to work on the initiative. “This research seeks to empower and protect California’s legacy cultivation communities who have overcome great adversity to innovate and steward one of the most important collections of cannabis genetic resources in the world,” stated Origins Council executive director Genine Coleman.

Additionally, the University of California, Irvine and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) received $2 million each, and both will be conducting cannabis potency studies.

UCLA-based studies secured six grants, and University of California, Berkeley (UCB) received grants for three. Other institutions included University of California, San Francisco, University of California, Davis, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and Cal Poly Humboldt.

One particular collaboration between UC Irvine and UCLA will conduct the “first double-blind, placebo-controlled, federally compliant, drug-administration study evaluating the intoxicating effects of inhaled cannabis plant compared to inhaled concentrates. It is expected [to] establish a clinically significant threshold to define high and low THC concentrations.”

In February, the DCC also announced a new grant program offering $20 million to help support and expand the state’s cannabis industry. “Expanding access to California’s retail cannabis market is an important step towards protecting consumer safety and supporting a balanced market,” said DCC director Nicole Elliott. “The retail access grant program ultimately seeks to encourage legal retail operations in areas where existing consumers do not have convenient access to regulated cannabis.” The grant application window ends on April 28, and $10 million of the grant funds will be awarded by June 20. After that, an additional $10 million will be “available to previous awardees as they issue licenses.”

The DCC released a statement in early March regarding the enforcement statistics from the past two years. According to the agency’s report, the DCC led 61 search warrant operations in 2021, but conducted 155 in 2022. In 2021, the DCC seized more than 41,726 pounds of cannabis (approximately $77,772,936 in value), but that number increased to 144,254 pounds in 2022 (estimated to be more than $243,017,836 in value).

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Officials in Berkeley, California are set to consider a proposal that would decriminalize psychedelics, including LSD.

The measure is a byproduct of a years-long project that has “lingered for three years in the Berkeley City Council,” according to Berkeleyside, which added that the council is set to “come back to life in a few weeks.”

What distinguishes Berkeley’s proposal from other communities that have moved to legalize hallucinogens is that the northern California city would represent “an even broader proposal: one that could make it the first in the U.S. to decriminalize LSD,” according to Berkeleyside.

“Of the 15 U.S. cities that have softened restrictions on psychedelics, none has included this synthetic hallucinogen. Berkeley Community Health Commissioners Joseph Holcomb Adams and Karma Smart explained that the logic for decriminalizing LSD is that it meets the technical definition of psychedelics,” Berkeleyside reported.

“Berkeley’s resolution was initially drafted by the Oakland-based nonprofit Decriminalize Nature in 2019, and proposed decriminalizing only natural psychedelics, such as psilocybin mushrooms, ayahuasca, and mescaline cacti,” the outlet continued. “The resolution spent two years in the hands of the city’s Community Health Commission (CHC), one of 22 civil commissions advising the City Council. Over the last year, Adams and Smart, the two commissioners appointed to study it, entirely rewrote it. If approved by the City Council, the personal consumption of psychedelics will cease to be criminalized in Berkeley; sharing, giving, or distributing psychedelics will, however, continue to be crimes.”

According to NBC Bay Area, Berkeley “city health commissioners voted unanimously to recommend to the city council decriminalize the use of hallucinogens.”

The legalization and decriminalization of hallucinogens has emerged as the latest frontier in the United States’ drug reform movement. 

Earlier this month, U.S. Sens. Cory Booker, a Democrat, and Rand Paul, a Republican, introduced a bill requiring the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to classify therapies involving psilocybin and MDMA in order to improve access for patients and researchers. 

“Recent studies suggest that some Schedule I substances such as MDMA and psilocybin could represent an enormous advancement for the treatment of severe post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and addiction,” Booker said in a statement. “Unfortunately, regulatory red tape and a series of bureaucratic hurdles involved in studying Schedule I substances impedes critical research on these and other promising Schedule I compounds. This bill reduces these unreasonably burdensome rules and regulations that delay or prevent researchers from studying – and patients from accessing – this entire class of potential medicines.”

Paul said he was proud to co-lead this legislation, which is known as the Breakthrough Therapies Act, with Sen. Booker that would streamline the registration process for breakthrough therapies currently restricted by outdated drug classifications.

“This bill will make it easier for researchers to conduct studies that can lead to breakthrough therapies to treat patients battling serious and life-threatening conditions,” Paul said in a statement. 

The legislation has won the endorsement of Martin R. Steele, a retired United States Marine Corps lieutenant general who leads the Veteran Mental Health Leadership Coalition.

“We urge Congress to swiftly pass the Breakthrough Therapies Act, which responsibly reduces the barriers to research and limited access of potentially life-saving treatments like MDMA- and psilocybin-assisted therapy,” said Steele. “Veterans should not be forced (nor should anyone else) to leave the country – at great expense – to access breakthrough therapies that can be safely provided and further studied in real-world settings here at home.”

Should the bill pass and become law, it would force the DEA to reschedule the aforementioned substances under the Controlled Substances Act. 

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