Monday, November 11, 2024

The buzz about Trump and psychedelics

Presented by GSK: The ideas and innovators shaping health care
Nov 11, 2024 View in browser
 
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By Erin Schumaker, Daniel Payne, Ruth Reader and Carmen Paun

Presented by 

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POLICY PUZZLE

Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, speaks during a campaign rally on Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024, in Derry, N.H. (AP Photo/Steve Senne)

JD Vance, now the vice president-elect, pleaded ignorance about psychedelics on Joe Rogan's show. | AP

Donald Trump's return to the White House could be a bright spot in an otherwise brutal year for the psychedelic medicine movement.

How’s that? The President-elect has said he wants Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be part of his health care team, and psychedelics are at the top of a list of things, including raw milk, chelating compounds and sunshine, Kennedy alleges the Food and Drug Administration is keeping away from Americans.

FDA’s war on public health is about to end,” Kennedy wrote on X last month, listing “aggressive suppression of psychedelics” among the regulatory decisions he wants to reverse.

“If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags.”

Big picture: The FDA was at the center of psychedelic medicine’s bad year.

The agency rejected drugmaker Lykos Therapeutics’ application to treat PTSD with the psychedelic drug MDMA and talk therapy in August after the agency’s outside advisers said Lykos’ regimen wasn’t effective and the company hadn’t shown that its benefits outweighed its risks.

The decision sent a chill through the psychedelic drugmaking community, contributing to one Lykos competitor, Compass Pathways, delaying the release of study results and laying off staff.

The psychedelics movement took another hit last week when Massachusetts voters rejected a ballot measure to legalize certain plant-based psychedelics for adults.

Big names, big money: Tech mogul Elon Musk, who also has Trump’s ear after vigorously campaigning for him, has said he has a prescription for ketamine, a drug with psychedelic properties. The Wall Street Journal has also reported that Musk has used magic mushrooms, ecstasy and LSD.

Silicon Valley venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who supported Trump’s first bid for the White House, served as Vice President-elect JD Vance’s mentor in the financial world and donated to Vance’s Senate campaign, has invested millions in psychedelic drugmaker Atai.

Podcast host Joe Rogan pitched Vance on MDMA therapy for veterans when Vance was a guest on the Joe Rogan Experience last month, telling Vance that psychedelics have helped his friends with PTSD who served in the military.

“You can definitely still study whether this helps people or not. Why aren’t we doing that?” Vance said of psychedelic therapy. “This is a problem I know nothing about,” he added. “This proposed solution — literally the first time I’ve heard about this.”

What's next? If Trump wants to boost psychedelic medicine, allies are waiting in Congress, including Reps. Jack Bergman (R-Mich.), Morgan Luttrell (R-Texas) and Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), who believe the FDA should fast-track approval of MDMA-assisted therapy for veterans.

On Thursday, the nonprofit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, which is Lykos’ largest shareholder, acknowledged that the regulatory environment will likely look different next year.

“While President-elect Trump’s alliances may raise the visibility of psychedelics in public health discussions, we are hopeful that regulatory safeguards for patient and public health will remain intact,” Ismail Ali, director of policy and advocacy at MAPS, said in a statement.

“MAPS remains optimistic about the future of federal support for psychedelic research through agencies like the [Department of Veterans Affairs] and the National Institutes of Health.”

 

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WASHINGTON WATCH

Michael Kratsios speaks at POLITICO’s 2024 AI and Tech Summit.

Kratsios is the guy to see about AI jobs in the Trump administration. | Rod Lamkey Jr. for POLITICO

An adviser steeped in AI policy is back to advise Trump’s transition, our Daniel Lippman and Mohar Chatterjee report.

Michael Kratsios, the managing director of AI training firm Scale AI, will vet potential hires with experience in artificial intelligence.

He served as chief technology officer during Trump’s first term and was an author of Trump’s 2020 AI executive order. The order aimed to supercharge AI research investment, federal computing and data resources; set technical standards; build up the American AI workforce; and engage with international allies on the technology.

The 2020 order, issued just a month before Trump left office, sang the praises of AI in health care.

How so? It touted a Department of Health and Human Services AI pilot project to use AI to conduct regulatory reviews and improve the rulemaking process.

And it promoted the creation in 2019 of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ National AI Institute to boost AI research by studying the health care information in the VA’s possession.

Additionally, it pointed to how the Department of Energy’s labs used AI to seek treatments for Covid-19.

The backstory: Before his stint in the first Trump administration, Kratsios advised companies for Thiel’s investment firm. Thiel invests heavily in health technology and drug research.

DANGER ZONE

A man smokes marijuana during 'Cannabis at the park' festival in Bogota, Colombia on October 7, 2023. (Photo by Daniel Munoz / AFP) (Photo by DANIEL MUNOZ/AFP via Getty Images)

That joint might cause psychosis, but then again, it might not, researchers said. | AFP via Getty Images

Adolescents who use cannabis are more likely to experience symptoms of psychosis, according to a new study in JAMA Psychiatry.

But the researchers from Washington University in St. Louis aren’t sure whether the kids are self-medicating or the cannabis is causing the psychosis, our Mona Zhang reports.

While researchers found shared risk factors between psychosis symptoms and cannabis use, the evidence for cannabis use causing psychosis was limited.

“Debate continues regarding the nature of the association between adolescent cannabis use and psychosis risk,” the researchers wrote.

The researchers analyzed data from nearly 12,000 participants in the NIH-funded Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, a longitudinal project that collects data across the U.S. from 21 research sites. They scrutinized data on adolescent psychosis symptoms before and after cannabis use.

The rate of increases in psychosis symptoms was less pronounced after the first time adolescents used cannabis, and individuals experienced a reduction in distress related to those symptoms after first using cannabis.

While the researchers found limited evidence of a direct cause between cannabis use and psychosis symptoms, they warned that their findings “should not be construed as evidence against a causal or contributing role of adolescent cannabis use on psychosis risk.”

What’s next? The researchers called for more studies that follow adolescents for a longer period to see whether psychosis symptoms can be more directly attributed to cannabis use.

 

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