{"id":642861,"date":"2026-05-01T14:09:32","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T14:09:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/642861\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T14:09:32","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T14:09:32","slug":"when-joe-rogan-is-in-charge-of-health-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/642861\/","title":{"rendered":"When Joe Rogan Is in Charge of Health Care"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>President Donald Trump (foreground), Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, and podcaster Joe Rogan in the Oval Office on April 18, 2026. (Photo by Allison Robbert\/Washington Post via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

IF YOU DON\u2019T LIKE ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. setting national health policy, how do you feel about Joe Rogan? The question is a serious one that deserves a serious answer, given what transpired when Rogan showed up in the Oval Office a little over a week ago.<\/p>\n

He was there to watch President Donald Trump sign<\/a> an executive order promoting psychedelic drugs<\/a> as a treatment for mental illness, a cause that Rogan has long championed. But it turned out the podcast host wasn\u2019t just another invited guest. He was the one who had prompted Trump to act<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI sent him that information,\u201d Rogan said, revealing he\u2019d texted the president about the ways psychedelics might help with conditions like depression and PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). \u201cThe text message came back, \u2018Sounds great. Do you want FDA approval? Let\u2019s do it.\u2019 It was literally that quick.\u201d<\/p>\n

This does not appear to be an exaggeration.<\/p>\n

Mehmet Oz<\/a>, the celebrity doctor who oversees Medicare and Medicaid programs, told reporters that Rogan\u2019s text set off a frenetic week of internal deliberations that culminated in the executive order. Kennedy<\/a> played a role too, as Trump recounted in his own remarks. \u201cI said, \u2018Bobby, let\u2019s just do it and get Oz involved and it\u2019s going to get done so quickly,\u2019\u201d Trump recounted. \u201cAnd you guys did a great job.\u201d<\/p>\n

The executive order<\/a> calls on the Department of Health and Human Services to make more funds available for research into psychedelics, while telling the Drug Enforcement Agency to update its legal guidelines to allow legitimate academic and therapeutic uses to go forward. Those moves reflect a widespread recognition that psychedelics have real potential as a breakthrough therapy for some patients. And it\u2019s hard to find anybody\u2014even among frequent administration critics\u2014who finds this sort of action beyond the bounds of normal presidential prerogatives.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s well within the remit of any administration to decide that research in a given area is a priority for them, and to make it easier for researchers to do that work,\u201d Peter Lurie<\/a>, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, told me.<\/p>\n

But the executive order also instructs the Food and Drug Administration to give psychedelic manufacturers so-called priority vouchers<\/a> that expedite reviews. This provision is setting off alarm bells because it suggests the president is doing an end-run around the FDA\u2019s normal scientific processes, quite possibly because he wants to quiet<\/a> a politically influential podcaster who has been giving him grief over Iran<\/a>. It also seems possible Trump might be looking to boost companies that stand to profit bigly<\/a> from psychedelics\u2014companies who count among their investors well-known Trump allies like Peter Thiel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe optics of the situation are quite concerning,\u201d Rachel Sachs<\/a>, a Washington University law professor and expert<\/a> on drug regulation, told me. \u201cIt appears that the president is directing FDA, at the very least, to issue these priority vouchers to these products\u2014and based on his public statements, will be exerting some type of pressure on FDA to ultimately approve the products.\u201d<\/p>\n

It wouldn\u2019t be the first instance of such meddling: Career FDA staff have told STAT News<\/a> that they have come under pressure from administration officials seeking priority vouchers for pharmaceutical companies that agree to the prescription drug pricing deals<\/a> Trump keeps hyping. And it\u2019s not like it takes journalistic sleuthing to establish the connection to Rogan: Trump and several other administration officials came right out and said it exists.<\/p>\n

None of this means that the FDA will ultimately bend to pressure from top Trump officials, or make ill-considered decisions when it comes to any particular treatments. But the threat itself is enough to damage the agency\u2019s credibility, in ways that could ultimately hurt everybody\u2014including both the companies that want to manufacture psychedelics and the people who might genuinely benefit from them.<\/p>\n

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MODERN INTEREST IN THE THERAPEUTIC BENEFITS of psychedelics, like so many key episodes in medical history, traces back to an accident in the lab. In 1943, a Swiss chemist named Albert Hofmann was synthesizing a substance he hoped would lead to respiratory stimulants<\/a> when he inadvertently absorbed a tiny amount. The substance was a version of a compound we know as LSD<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The LSD altered his vision and perception, and made him feel like he was in a \u201cmystical\u201d state<\/a>. He decided to try again a few days later, and experienced even more dramatic changes in perception and mental status. Hofmann famously rode his bicycle home while on what we would now call an acid trip, which is why historians (both professional and amateur) call the April 19 anniversary of that ride \u201cbicycle day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hofmann worked for a company called Sandoz Laboratories, where he and his colleagues quickly recognized the potential of such a powerful mind-altering drug. Sandoz distributed research samples to psychiatrists, kicking off a wave of promising studies<\/a> in the 1950s that suggested potential to treat depression, personality disorders, and alcoholism.<\/p>\n

Publicity around these developments attracted lots of attention, and not just among people with mental illness or those trying to treat it. Counterculture leaders in the \u201960s hailed the drugs (still legal for purchase back then) as a way for everybody to alter their state of consciousness. Meanwhile, the CIA experimented with LSD as a way to wage psychological warfare.<\/p>\n

Both those developments fed a backlash. Researchers stopped studying psychedelics, Sandoz stopped producing LSD, and the National Institutes of Health pulled funding. Eventually the federal government declared psychedelics to be a Schedule I controlled substance, making studies even more difficult to conduct.<\/p>\n

That was basically the end of research on psychedelics\u2014until 2000, when scientists at Johns Hopkins University<\/a> launched a new study on the effects of Psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms that indigenous central Americans had long used in religious ceremonies<\/a>. That project and a series of followups picked up where the studies from the \u201950s and \u201960s left off, yielding results suggesting<\/a> psychedelics might work as a treatment for alcoholism, anxiety among people facing life-threatening cancer, and other conditions.<\/p>\n

Recently some especially influential research<\/a> has demonstrated that treatment with MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy, could help veterans with PTSD who were not responding to more traditional therapies. The potential to reach these veterans and others facing similar struggles has been a big theme of Rogan\u2019s promotion, and got plenty of attention from Trump in the Oval Office<\/a> last weekend.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday\u2019s order will ensure that people suffering from debilitating symptoms might finally have a chance to reclaim their lives and lead a happier life,\u201d Trump said<\/a> while signing the order.<\/p>\n

Later he asked, jokingly, \u201cCan I have some, please?\u201d<\/p>\n

AS WITH ANY DRUG, the challenge with psychedelics lies in demonstrating they can live up to their hype<\/a>. That means fully studying possible adverse effects, which is no small thing given the potential of some psychedelics to raise blood pressure and the possibility that others could trigger psychosis or worsen symptoms of bipolar disorder.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just questions about safety that need answering. It\u2019s also questions about efficacy, which for psychedelics can be particularly challenging to assess.<\/p>\n

The best way to test how well a drug works\u2014and under what conditions\u2014is through \u201cdouble-blind\u201d experiments in which neither the researchers nor the subjects know who is getting the treatment and who is getting the placebo. But anybody participating in a psychedelic study is going to figure out pretty quickly whether their mental status is changing. That can bias the findings, especially for a drug where results depend so much on how test subjects say they feel rather than measurable physical signs.<\/p>\n

Researchers will also know who\u2019s really getting the treatment, because they\u2019re going to be watching as it happens. The proper way to administer psychedelics is in lengthy sessions<\/a> that last many hours, with a therapist guiding the patient through talk therapy while they are in the altered mental state. That\u2019s how the drugs appear to work: People in that altered state are able to get past mental blockages from past trauma, in order to grapple with underlying causes of depression, substance abuse disorder, and other conditions.<\/p>\n

Concern over the reliability of data<\/a> was among the reasons that an FDA panel two years ago voted<\/a> overwhelmingly against approval of an MDMA-based drug that would have been the first new major PTSD treatment in decades. That disappointed<\/a> advocates and researchers, some of whom felt FDA was being too rigid. But the FDA has issued guidance<\/a> on the kind of evidence it would need and\u2014even before last week\u2019s announcement\u2014companies were lining up<\/a> with new applications they were optimistic<\/a> would succeed, with plenty of investment money behind them.<\/p>\n

Now Trump has gotten in the middle of things, creating several potential hazards. Probably the most obvious is the possibility that his order pushes the FDA to rush the review process, in ways that make it more likely scientists overlook warning signs about safety problems. \u201cThe speed of review here that they contemplate is very, very rapid,\u201d said Lurie, who noted that psychedelics were already eligible for the quicker of two review tracks at the FDA.<\/p>\n

Expediting reviews of psychedelics could also force the FDA to slow down reviews of more promising therapies, especially when the agency is operating with fewer personnel thanks to DOGE-ordered layoffs and DOGE-induced departures. \u201cWe stand a risk of FDA scarce resources being devoted to things that are actually less important from a public health point of view,\u201d Lurie said, \u201cin which case patients suffer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some enthusiasts of psychedelics might not worry so much about what happens to other drugs. But, as Sachs pointed out to me, the stigma and controversial history of psychedelics mean their manufacturers are especially dependent on collective trust that any approval was based purely on scientific merit.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there is a perception that a podcaster texted the president, and that\u2019s why these products were approved, that\u2019s a problem for these companies,\u201d Sachs said.<\/p>\n

TRUMP\u2019S ORDER BY NO MEANS represents the first time officials in the executive branch have interfered with FDA decision-making.<\/p>\n

In the early 2000s, the Bush administration<\/a> famously blocked over-the-counter sales of emergency contraception to minors. A few years later, the Obama administration<\/a> just as famously did the same thing, despite an explicit promise<\/a> to let science\u2014not politics\u2014dictate agency decision-making.<\/p>\n

But those were isolated incidents, confined to one particularly controversial type of drug. \u201cWe cite these specific examples because it was a rare occurrence,\u201d Sachs said, \u201cand it was often criticized quite strongly when it did occur.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under Trump, by contrast, interference with decision-making has become common across health care agencies\u2014whether it\u2019s canceling funding<\/a> for projects simply because their abstracts contain keywords that sound like DEI, or dispensing<\/a> with normal CDC procedures to pull back on support for vaccination. \u201cThose [previous controversies] felt like exceptions to the rule; now it\u2019s not even clear what the rules are,\u201d Lurie said.<\/p>\n

FDA arguably has held up against Trumpian political influence better than some other scientific agencies. But the pressure<\/a> has taken a toll<\/a>. And Lurie worries it\u2019s only a matter of time before the agency loses the independence and credibility that is the foundation for the pharmaceutical ecosystem, and upon which the well-being of so many people depends.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can get to a place with the FDA where people assume they only approved a particular drug\u2014or didn\u2019t approve it, as the case may be\u2014because it was politically useful,\u201d Lurie said. \u201cAt that point, patients don\u2019t know what to do, doctors don\u2019t know what to do, insurers don\u2019t know what to do, because they simply can\u2019t trust what\u2019s coming out of the government. And it\u2019s very difficult to really advance patient care under circumstances like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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