When the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) placed psychedelics in Schedule I (“no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse”) in 1970, it created regulatory barriers that make clinical research on their efficacy, dosing, and therapeutic use far more difficult. At the same time, most psychedelics—whether plant-based or synthetic, such as LSD and MDMA—are off-patent. While companies can patent specific methods of extraction or synthesis, the lack of exclusivity gives them little financial incentive to invest in the costly process of securing DEA approval for clinical research.

On April 17, President Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to reduce barriers to psychedelic research, aiming to accelerate studies of substances such as LSD, psilocybin, and MDMA (“ecstasy“ or “Molly”). The order also allocates $50 million to support state-level research on ibogaine, a psychedelic being explored as a treatment for opioid use disorder—funding expected to benefit Texas, which has already invested heavily in studying the drug.

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