LEGALIZE THEM ALL –
July 29, 2025 – Last year, prescription MDMA looked like a sure thing. After decades of clinical research, political wrangling, and aggressive promotion, the popular underground club drug was set to be tamed and medicalized, with a stamp of approval from the US Food and Drug Administration. Then, it wasn’t.In a stark change of course, the FDA rejected the MDMA therapy it had been considering by a 10-1 vote. The decision derailed psychedelic medicine for the foreseeable future.
Except for one thing—an unexpected lifeline from the Trump administration. In May, the FDA’s new commissioner, surgical oncologist Marty Makary, appeared on cable news to declare MDMA and other Schedule 1 narcotics “a top priority for this FDA and this administration.” Elsewhere, Mr. MAHA himself, the US Health and Human Services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has spoken positively about the psychoactive stems-and-bark tea ayahuasca. Matt Zorn, a lawyer recently appointed to RFK Jr.’s department, had previously fought the US government to allow access to cannabis and psychedelic mushrooms. Casey Means, Trump’s nominee for surgeon general, has spoken of the benefits of psilocybin-assisted therapy, claiming that psychedelic mushrooms helped her find love and made her feel like “part of an infinite and unbroken series of cosmic nesting dolls.”
