President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Saturday that aims to invest in the research and development of psychedelic therapies, including Ibogaine. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Austin American-Statesman
The federal government on Saturday took a page out of Texas lawmakers’ playbooks, as President Donald Trump signed an executive order that aims to invest in and accelerate research on psychedelic therapies. Trump’s order focused on Ibogaine, a drug that former Gov. Rick Perry and others have advocated for to provide relief to veterans with mental health challenges.
“In Texas, Republican leaders have already committed $50 million to the Ibogaine research,” Trump said on Saturday, referring to an initiative the Texas Legislature approved last June. “Today, the federal government is making a $50 million research investment of its own.”
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Ibogaine, is an extract of an ancient African shrub that has been used to alleviate addiction and brain trauma. This weekend, Trump cited research that has found Ibogaine therapy helps veterans who have anxiety, PTSD and other mental and physical health issues. The president appeared to joke, asking if he could “have some, please.”
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. outlined the executive order’s aims, saying his department would “accelerate research, approval and access to new mental health treatments,” including psychedelic therapies, such as Ibogaine.
“This decisive step [is] to confront one of the most urgent public health challenges facing our nation, the mental health crisis,” Kennedy Jr. said.
Trump also hinted at his administration’s plans to allow Ibogaine to be administered to “desperately ill” patients under the Right to Try Act. The act establishes an alternative pathway for terminally ill patients to access experimental drugs from manufacturers that have not gone through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s traditional approval process.
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FDA Commissioner Martin Makary announced Saturday that the FDA has granted Ibogaine investigational new drug clearance, paving the way for the first-ever human trials in the U.S.
“Everyone is so strongly in favor of this,” Trump said. “It is for a lot of people, but it is for our military, in particular.”
Trump was joined in the Oval Office by other Ibogaine advocates, including Austin podcast mogul Joe Rogan; Texas Congressman Morgan Luttrell, R-Magnolia; and his brother, veteran and author Marcus Luttrell, who is known as the “Lone Survivor” for chronicling his experience during the 2005 Operation Red Wings in Afghanistan.
Rogan shouted out Bryan Hubbard, who runs the nonprofit advocacy group Americans for Ibogaine, and Perry, who previously came on his podcast to tell him more about the merits of Ibogaine.
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Rogan said he texted Trump about how Ibogaine helps those who struggle with opioid addiction and shortly after, Trump responded: “Sounds great, do you want FDA approval? Let’s do it.”
Ibogaine efforts find a home in the Lone Star State
During a South by Southwest panel last month, Perry called for federal approval of Ibogaine to help treat addiction and mental health disorders.
The former governor and two-time presidential candidate, who also served as U.S. Secretary of Energy under the first Trump administration, acknowledged that his push for the plant-based psychoactive drug has raised eyebrows. He told the audience a political consultant warned him he was risking 40 years of his reputation over “this hippie [expletive].”
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“This is what I want to do for the rest of my life,” Perry said of his advocacy for the drug. “I don’t know how many years the good Lord is going to give me, hopefully a lot. I can’t tell you how much I believe in what these individuals are involved with, the work that they’re willing to do and the reputational life that they give this.”
Perry was first introduced to the drug’s potential uses when Luttrell lived with Perry for two years while the veteran recovered from depression and anxiety.