In a highly controversial decision that has raised grave concerns among clinical researchers and medical experts, President Donald Trump signed an executive order over the weekend directing the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to fast-track research into and approval of using psychedelic drugs to treat mental illnesses.

In a continuation of policies deregulating powerfully addictive and health-damaging drugs like marijuana for purported medicinal uses, a White House statement released Saturday explained that the EO ordered the FDA to provide Commissioner’s National Priority Vouchers to psychedelic drugs “that have received Breakthrough Therapy designations for treating serious mental illnesses,” which experts say could enable the highly potent drugs to be approved for use within weeks. The EO further authorized human trials for psychedelic drugs for the first time and allocated $50 million for expanded research into the hallucinogenic drugs.

In justifying the decision, the Trump administration cited increasing rates of serious mental illness among Americans, particularly military veterans. “President Trump has long been committed to accelerating medical treatment development and to ensure Americans and our veterans struggling with complex, hard to treat, and even incurable diseases and mental illnesses are able to access the care they need,” the statement read.

The Murky History and Growing Popularity of Psychedelics

But as investigative journalists have discovered in recent years, the U.S. government has already attempted to unlock the potency of psychedelic drugs, ostensibly for national security reasons, with tragic results. In the groundbreaking accounts “Phenomena” and “Poisoner In Chief,” journalists Annie Jacobsen and Stephen Kinzer detail how American military and intelligence agencies embarked on a top-secret operation beginning in the 1950s to see if psychedelics could be used for mind control, extrasensory perception, and psychokinesis, fearing that the Soviet Union may have achieved the capabilities.

In its quest to see if mind control was possible, a secret CIA operation called MK-ULTRA used American, Japanese, German, and Filipino prisoners as experimental test subjects, forcing them to use the highly potent psychedelic drug lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) to “blast away the existing mind.” The results of the experiments were catastrophic, as the psychotropic effects of LSD can cause severe anxiety, panic, and confusion and can result in long-term paranoia, hallucinations, mood swings, and other mental problems. “We don’t know how many people died, but a number did, and many lives were permanently destroyed,” Kinzer described.

While Trump’s EO did not reference deregulating LSD specifically, it ordered the FDA to “establish a pathway for eligible patients to access investigational psychedelic drugs, including ibogaine compounds,” saying that the drug is “under FDA review” and has “met basic safety requirements.” But research shows that ibogaine is associated with lingering mood disturbances, including mania that can last for days, as well as serious health dangers that include cardiotoxicity and death.

Organizations like the Foundation for Drug Policy Solutions (FDPS) are condemning the Trump administration’s decision to deregulate psychedelics “in the strongest possible terms,” saying that the decision will have disastrous health consequences. “This order elevates politics and hype over sound science,” FDPS CEO Kevin A. Sabet stated. “It implies that risky, unapproved hallucinogens can function as legitimate medical therapies. Ibogaine, for example, is still classified as a Schedule I substance and carries well-documented safety risks, including cardiotoxic effects and reported fatalities.”

Sabet further noted that “the evidence for the supposed therapeutic benefits of these drugs is beyond weak; the research behind it is rife with conflict and industry connections. When the federal government lends its endorsement to any substance, that signal carries enormous weight. That power cannot and must not be used to legitimize unproven and potentially dangerous substances, particularly under the banner of helping those who have served our country.”

“This move comes, sadly, in the wider context of a Trump administration that has already done much to normalize marijuana, hemp THC, and CBD,” Sabet added. “We strongly support rigorous, evidence-based research into new treatments, but this approach is dangerous and misguided and will put Americans at real risk.”

The Trump administration’s push to deregulate psychedelics comes in the wake of a broader bipartisan effort that has arisen in recent years. In 2023, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) led efforts to include funding for psychedelics research in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), arguing that the hallucinogenic drugs offer “lifesaving” treatments for those struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), particularly military veterans.

Testimonies of psychedelics helping veterans cope with PTSD have proliferated in recent years, encapsulated in a 2025 documentary entitled “In Waves and War.” Former Navy SEAL and Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions (VETS) Co-Founder Marcus Capone, who is a subject in the film, claimed in an interview that “over 1,200 individuals have gotten better” after receiving treatments using the psychedelic drug ibogaine.

An Alarming Body of Clinical Data

Medical experts like Dr. Bertha Madras, a professor of Psychobiology at Harvard Medical School, say that while personal anecdotal accounts of the benefits of taking small doses of certain psychedelic drugs like ibogaine in order to help treat severe depressive conditions and PTSD cannot be dismissed, there is very little solid clinical evidence of widespread benefits of the drugs, and there are also serious red flags that cannot be dismissed.

“Ibogaine has not met basic safety requirements,” she told The Washington Stand. “In the 1990s, NIDA conducted clinical trials with ibogaine and halted the trials because of animal neurotoxicity, seizures in primates, and bradycardia/cardiotoxicity. There were fatalities — with undiscoverable documentation.” 

While Madras noted that there is some “suggestive but not definitive” evidence that ibogaine can reduce withdrawal symptoms from opioid addiction, she emphasized that the drug’s association with serious cardiac issues is of great concern. “Ibogaine has been associated with QT prolongation, ventricular arrhythmias, cardiac arrest, and deaths, including case reports after doses used for anti-addiction treatment and in people without known structural heart disease,” she explained. “A 2026 clinical review specifically noted that serious cardiovascular events can occur even at therapeutic doses.”

Madras also expressed concern that the increased cultural popularity of psychedelics like psilocybin (known as “magic mushrooms”) is resulting in serious harm to public health.

“With growing media attention, illicit psilocybin use has increased, with approximately 7.8 million individuals reporting past-year use,” she noted. “Poison control center calls and emergency department visits have risen in parallel, although absolute numbers remain small. National Poison Data System data reveal substantial morbidity, rare fatalities, and sharp increases since 2019, particularly among adolescents and young adults. Reported adverse effects include anxiety, paranoia, confusion, and emotional distress; rare but more severe outcomes include hallucinogen persisting perception disorder, characterized by persistent perceptual disturbances or visual hallucinations causing distress or impairment.”

Madras further emphasized that a series of complex challenges present serious barriers to scaling psychedelics for therapeutic purposes. “Psychedelic-assisted therapies are unlikely to fit a traditional prescription model of a written prescription and a follow-up later,” she observed. “They require specialist-administered care integrated with psychotherapy and supported by appropriate regulatory and ethical oversight. Important questions remain regarding long-term safety, scalability, workforce preparation, equitable access, and medico-legal responsibility before wider clinical adoption can be justified.”

“Recreational use is another major concern, as witnessed by the excesses of the 1960s,” Madras continued. “Hallucinogens have massive effects on brain function. A single dose or multiple doses can result — rarely — in permanent brain dysfunction.”

As for the Trump administration’s efforts to accelerate the FDA’s approval of psychedelic drugs for widespread use, Madras expressed significant misgivings, pointing out that the FDA has already denied approval of MDMA (known as “ecstasy”) in 2024.

“They denied it by criteria that should be applied to the current roster of psychedelic drugs, which includes psilocybin, LSD, ibogaine, and a few others,” she detailed during “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” Tuesday. “… And the reason they denied the approval is for very simple criteria. The studies were unblinded. The outcome measures were not critically evaluated. Safety concerns were not necessarily adequately assessed. So they had very rigid criteria and they applied them. I want the president, the present FDA, to use the same rigorous standards for these drugs.”

 “[T]he FDA process in terms of approving a drug takes quite a long time, because generally most drugs generate about 100,000 to 200,000 pages of data, and so that that’s quite a daunting task to do in a short period of time,” Madras added. ... “[A]t this point, I have to say unequivocally that the current trials have weaknesses, and those weaknesses make me think quite strongly that we’re not ready for prime time with these drugs, … especially with regard to safety for general use in the population.”

The Spiritual Ramifications of Psychedelics

Medical experts like Dr. Jennifer Bauwens, a clinical psychologist and researcher who has studied psychological trauma, have long expressed concerns about how psychedelic drugs can have profound psychological impacts, specifically opening a person up to dark spiritual forces.

“Psychedelics are a class of drugs that bind themselves to serotonin receptors,” she explained during a 2024 episode of the “Outstanding” podcast. “[W]hat that means is that it’s a class of drugs that can … open your spirit. It’s known to open you to alternative certification programs in the psychological fields [that] deal with non-ordinary states of consciousness. [This] whole class of drugs opens a person up to these alternative sort of experiences, and it does it through our brain chemicals. It’s a very unique class of drugs because it has the potential to produce a hallucinogenic effect.”

Bauwens, who serves as a senior research fellow at Family Research Council, pointed out that patients who are given psychedelic drugs in a clinical setting indicate in surveys that they have “spiritual encounters.” “[T]his isn’t a drug that just relieves pain like an aspirin. This is something that opens your whole being. It’s not just a psychological experience. It’s a physical, psychological, and a spiritual experience.”

“When you look back at the early church and some of the pagan practices, a lot of them surrounded using substances,” she continued. “In fact, the word for witchcraft comes from the Greek word ‘pharmakeia,’ which is where we get the word for pharmacy. And so we have to think that if the Bible uses that word ‘witchcraft’ in connection with drugs and in terms of drugs that bring you into an altered state, that’s important — we need to pay attention to that, because that is what the pagan practices would do. They would invite their worshippers to ingest psychedelic types of drugs, and they would get into an alternative state, and then they would do all kinds of sexual things in worship to demons.”

“At the heart of that is a spiritual practice,” Bauwens underscored. “… So when you use these drugs, it’s not without spiritual consequence, but it’s also not without psychological consequence. … [Y]ou’re getting this drug from a psychologist who says they specialize in working in non-ordinary states of consciousness. I’m not sure what qualifies them to do that, but that’s what their aim is — to get you into this state so that you can begin to process your traumas with this person. … And so, you’re putting a lot of trust into that person, and you’re relinquishing control to that drug. The Bible tells us this is very clear: you are not your own. You were bought with a price. So, we need to be inviting the Holy Spirit [and] asking, do you want me to participate in this?”

As a clinician, Bauwens further recounted the transformational role that connecting with a higher power has to heal those who have experienced trauma.

“[S]o many people I’ve worked with have come for trauma counseling, the ones that healed the best and the fastest are the ones who can connect with God and sit in his presence because his presence is transformative,” she described. “We are changed from glory to glory, grace to grace, strength to strength, and so there is something about the presence of the Lord that can heal like nothing else. And everything else … might be helpful for a bit. … But in the end, it’s God who transforms. It’s God who heals. And so, we always want to bring it back to that reality.”