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Politico
30-06-2025
- Health
- Politico
How MAGA learned to love psychedelics
Presented by Driving the Day THE PSYCHEDELICS FLIP-FLOP — Historically, the Republican Party hasn't jumped to embrace cutting-edge medical treatments that involve drugs commonly used recreationally (see: 'Marijuana'). But things are shifting when it comes to psychedelics for PTSD — and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could be just the person the movement has been looking for, POLITICO's Erin Schumaker reports. Driven by a desire to help ex-servicemembers with post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental illnesses, GOP lawmakers led a failed campaign last year to persuade the Biden administration to approve psychedelic drugs. The campaign ended when, in August, the FDA rejected drugmaker Lykos Therapeutics' application to offer ecstasy, alongside therapy, as a PTSD treatment. FDA advisers expressed concern that the company's researchers were more evangelists than scientists and determined they'd failed to prove the regimen was either safe or effective. The advisers also raised concerns that ecstasy had the potential to damage the heart and liver. But Kennedy has been known to embrace medical treatments that fall well outside of the mainstream. A friend in MAHA: A longtime believer in psychedelics' potential to help people with illnesses like PTSD and depression, Kennedy is ramping up government-run clinical studies and telling the disappointed lawmakers that doctors would soon be prescribing the drugs, even though Biden officials found no evidence of their effectiveness. 'These are people who badly need some kind of therapy; nothing else is working for them,' Kennedy said at a House hearing Tuesday. 'This line of therapeutics has tremendous advantage if given in a clinical setting. And we are working very hard to make sure that that happens within 12 months.' The shifting political landscape: The GOP's embrace of psychedelics is another — and perhaps one of the more jarring — examples of cultural transformation that President Donald Trump's populist politics have brought. Veterans seeking cures for mental illnesses associated with combat, combined with the Kennedy-backed Make America Healthy Again movement's enthusiasm for natural medicine, have strengthened a libertarian strain on the right in favor of drug experimentation. Meanwhile, the left, where hippies are giving way to technocrats, has become more skeptical. Key context: Earlier this month, Texas' Republican governor, Greg Abbott, signed a law to put $50 million into clinical trials of the psychedelic ibogaine as a mental health treatment. Like ecstasy, ibogaine also poses heart risks. The Drug Enforcement Administration lists both drugs on its schedule of drugs with no currently acceptable medical use and a high risk of abuse. That would have once been enough to make law-and-order Republicans say no. But top Kennedy adviser Calley Means says not anymore. 'Ten years ago, nobody expected the Republican Party as the party of healthy food, as the party of exercise, as the party of questioning pharmaceutical companies, as the party of psychedelic research — but that's where we are,' Means said. WELCOME TO MONDAY PULSE. The GOP's massive domestic policy bill could pass today. For the latest coverage, check out POLITICO's Inside Congress Live blog. Send your tips, scoops and feedback to khooper@ and sgardner@ and follow along @kelhoops and @sophie_gardnerj. In the courts OBAMACARE SCOTUS RULING FALLOUT — On Friday, the Supreme Court upheld a provision in the Affordable Care Act that mandates insurance companies cover preventive health services at no cost to patients, POLITICO's Lauren Gardner reports. The ruling hinged on the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force — an independent advisory panel of experts who recommend what preventive care should be covered free of charge. The court, in a 6-3 decision, ruled that the USPSTF is constitutional because the HHS secretary has the power to appoint and fire members and to reject their screening and drug recommendations. Some public health experts, including Kathy Hempstead, senior policy officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, expressed concern about how Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may use that power. The lawsuit was brought by individuals and businesses with religious objections to covering preexposure prophylaxis drugs, which are key to preventing HIV. Key context: Kennedy's recent decision to remove all members of the CDC's vaccine advisory panel and reconstitute it with individuals skeptical of immunizations illustrates the extent of that authority. 'It's sort of the end of one threat but the beginning of another,' Hempstead said. Kennedy said that the decision was needed to root out 'persistent conflicts of interest.' It's unclear whether Kennedy plans to alter the task force's membership, too. But federal law stipulates that policy decisions stemming from both groups' advice be based on science, said Andrew Pincus, a Supreme Court attorney at the law firm Mayer Brown who represented public health groups that filed a brief supporting the government's defense in the case. 'To the extent that they don't rest on science, I think they would be subject to being set aside by the courts,' he said. PHARMA WATCH WHO's WEIGHT-LOSS DRUG WARNING — The World Health Organization is cautioning health care professionals and regulatory authorities that weight-loss and diabetes drugs containing semaglutide have caused rare cases of sudden blindness, POLITICO's Carmen Paun reports. The WHO pointed to a recommendation earlier this month from the European Medicines Agency — the EU's drug regulator — which found that taking Novo Nordisk's Ozempic, Rybelsus and Wegovy could cause a condition known as nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy in up to 1 in 10,000 users. The condition is typically characterized by sudden, painless vision loss in one eye that's generally irreversible and for which no effective treatment is available, the WHO said. What's next: The WHO's drug-safety advisory committee evaluated the evidence and concluded that the risk-management plan for semaglutide drugs should be revised to include sudden blindness as a potential risk. Novo Nordisk didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. In Congress TILLIS WON'T RUN FOR REELECTION — Sen. Thom Tillis — who voted 'no' on advancing the GOP's massive domestic policy bill partly because of concerns over Medicaid cuts — will not run for reelection, the North Carolina Republican announced Sunday. The move comes after President Donald Trump said he would explore backing a primary challenger to the senator. The bill contains many of Trump's campaign promises. Key context: While Trump's Truth Social attacks might have accelerated Tillis' announcement — Trump called him, among other things, 'a talker and complainer, NOT A DOER!' — he had already shown ambivalence about his ability to win reelection while squarely backing Trump's agenda, POLITICO's Jordain Carney reports. He privately warned colleagues in a Senate Republican lunch last week that the megabill's approach to Medicaid would cause him to lose his race next year, remarks first reported by POLITICO. GOP colleagues chalked up Tillis' private warnings to his fears of a tough general election in the swing state, where popular former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper could be a formidable candidate. Names in the News Anindita 'Annie' Saha will take on the lead policy role on artificial intelligence at the Food and Drug Administration's drug division, according to an internal email reviewed by POLITICO. Saha is a 20-year agency veteran who will also keep her role as associate director for strategic initiatives at the Digital Health Center of Excellence within the FDA's device division. Saha replaces Tala Fakhouri, who is leaving the FDA. WHAT WE'RE READING The Wall Street Journal's Dominique Mosbergen reports on researchers' hopes that preemptive treatment for early-onset Altzhimer's could slow or even halt a disease that has no cure.
Politico
29-06-2025
- Health
- Politico
RFK Jr. is bringing psychedelics to the Republican party
Driven by a desire to help ex-servicemembers with mental illness, GOP lawmakers led a failed campaign last year to persuade the Biden administration to approve psychedelic drugs. Now they may have found the ally they need in President Donald Trump's health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. A longtime believer in psychedelics' potential to help people with illnesses like post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, despite the lack of supportive evidence Biden officials found, Kennedy is ramping up government-run clinical studies and telling the disappointed lawmakers doctors will be prescribing the drugs soon. 'These are people who badly need some kind of therapy, nothing else is working for them,' Kennedy said at a House hearing Tuesday. 'This line of therapeutics has tremendous advantage if given in a clinical setting. And we are working very hard to make sure that that happens within 12 months.' The GOP's embrace of psychedelics is another, and perhaps one of the more jarring, examples of cultural transformation that Trump's populist politics have brought. Veterans seeking cures for mental illnesses associated with combat, combined with the Kennedy-backed Make America Healthy Again movement's enthusiasm for natural medicine, have strengthened a libertarian strain on the right in favor of drug experimentation. Meanwhile, the left, where hippies are giving way to technocrats, has become more skeptical. When Joe Biden was president, for example, agencies studied the drugs' medical potential, but an air of doubt prevailed. The head of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Nora Volkow, compared the hype for psychedelics as a cure for mental illness to belief in 'fairy tales' in Senate testimony last year. Then in August, the Food and Drug Administration rejected drugmaker Lykos Therapeutics' application to offer ecstasy, alongside therapy, as a treatment for PTSD. FDA advisers worried the company's researchers were more evangelists than scientists and determined that they'd failed to prove their regimen was either safe or effective. Republicans complained the loudest. 'These technocrats think they know better,' Texas GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL who lost an eye in Afghanistan, wrote on X after FDA advisers recommended Lykos' application be rejected. 'Their job is to say NO and support the status quo.' But Crenshaw, who's helped secure funding for psychedelic research at the Defense Department, got the response he wanted from Kennedy at Tuesday's budget hearing. Kennedy said results from early government studies at the Department of Veterans Affairs and FDA were 'very, very encouraging.' He added that his FDA commissioner, Marty Makary, sees it the same way. 'Marty has told me that we don't want to wait two years to get this done,' he said. Crenshaw was pleased. 'I've spent years supporting clinical trials to study the use of psychedelics to treat PTSD,' he told POLITICO. 'It's been a long fight, and it's taken a lot of grit. I'm grateful Secretary Kennedy is taking this seriously — helping to mainstream what could be a groundbreaking shift in mental health.' Kennedy's comments have revived hope among psychedelics' advocates that the Lykos decision was more hiccup than death knell. 'It's important for the entire community and the entire value chain around psychedelic therapy to hear that he wants to responsibly explore the benefits and risks of these therapies,' said Dr. Shereef Elnahal, a health official at the VA under Biden who sees promise in the drugs. The VA, under Trump's secretary, Doug Collins, is working directly with Kennedy on clinical research. Collins has referenced psychedelics on a podcast appearance, on X and at a cabinet meeting this spring when Trump pressed him on what he's doing to drive down the high suicide rate among veterans. 'I talk with Collins about it all the time,' Kennedy said Tuesday. 'It's something that both of us are deeply interested in.' Earlier this month, Texas' Republican governor, Greg Abbott, signed a law to put $50 million into clinical trials of the psychedelic ibogaine, as a mental health treatment. 'That culture shift is underway,' W. Bryan Hubbard, who spearheaded the Texas bill and is executive director of the American Ibogaine Initiative, told POLITICO. As Hubbard sees it, the narrative around psychedelics has evolved from counterculture recreation to a promising medical treatment for the 'deaths of despair' from alcohol, drug overdoses and suicides the United States has grappled with in recent decades. Kennedy was happy to see it. 'It's super positive. It is really notable that the Republicans have become the party of some of these issues you wouldn't have expected before,' Calley Means, a top Kennedy adviser, told POLITICO. 'States pushing the envelope is certainly aligned with what Secretary Kennedy is trying to do. It gives him leverage to push bolder reforms.' The Texas effort involved a six-month sprint by Hubbard and former GOP Gov. Rick Perry to convince state lawmakers to pass the bill. Rep. Morgan Luttrell, another Lone Star Republican who credits ibogaine he took in Mexico with helping him overcome trauma he incurred during military service, also lobbied for it. Hubbard attributes their success partly to Texas' independent pioneer culture and a red-state philosophy that was receptive to his pitch for a medicalized psychedelics model. It didn't hurt that Abbott had signed a bill to study ecstasy, psilocybin and ketamine as treatments for veterans with PTSD with Baylor College of Medicine. And since Texans are no stranger to religion, conversations about the spiritual aspect of ibogaine treatment seemed to resonate with lawmakers. 'We had a message that was tailor-made for the Lone Star State,' he said. Veterans turned out at public hearings to describe traveling out of the country, often to Mexico, where ibogaine is unregulated, to receive treatment they couldn't access in the U.S. 'These heroes have gone to war to defend the land of the free, only to come home and be faced with inflexible, bureaucratic systems that offer ineffectual solutions, paired with the Controlled Substances Act that has forced them to flee the country that they have defended in order to access treatment in a foreign country,' Hubbard said. But the biggest momentum push was likely the boost Hubbard and Perry got from conservative kingmaker Joe Rogan when the two went on Rogan's podcast in January. 'That really put a tremendous amount of wind in our sails,' Hubbard said. Still, last year's FDA decision to reject Lykos Therapeutics' application underscores the concerns raised by many scientists that the utility of the drugs is oversold. FDA advisers raised ecstasy's potential to damage the heart and liver; a suspicion that trial researchers were more advocates than scientists; and a worry that results had been skewed by the psychedelics' pronounced effects, since participants could figure out if they got the drug. Ibogaine also poses heart risks. The Drug Enforcement Administration lists both it and ecstasy on its schedule of drugs with no currently acceptable medical use and high risk of abuse. That would have once been enough to make law-and-order Republicans say no. Kennedy's adviser Means says things are changing for the better. 'Ten years ago, nobody expected the Republican Party as the party of healthy food, as the party of exercise, as the party of questioning pharmaceutical companies, as the party of psychedelic research — but that's where we are,' Means said. 'The Democratic Party has become the party of blindly trusting experts,' he concluded. 'The Republican Party has become the countercultural party that's asking common-sense questions.'
Politico
27-02-2025
- Health
- Politico
Kennedy praises fast food chain's efforts to ‘Make America Healthy Again' after it ‘RFK'd' its fries
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. praised fast food chain Steak 'n Shake on Thursday, highlighting the restaurant's french fries as part of his 'Make America Healthy Again' agenda. 'Congratulations @SteaknShake for being the first national fast-food chain to begin the transition away from seed oils,' Kennedy — who was recently sworn in to lead the Department of Health and Human Services — wrote in a Thursday post to X. 'Thanks for leadership in the crusade to Make America Healthy Again.' Steak 'n Shake announced Monday in an X post that the chain's Ohio, Colorado, Florida, Texas and Oklahoma locations started making fries with 100 percent beef tallow, and the change will be implemented at all locations by March 1. Steak 'n Shake initially announced plans for the transition in January. Kennedy has long crusaded for remaking the American food system, embracing scientifically dubious theories about seed oils, which are often used in cooking and frying foods. 'Fries will be RFK'd!,' the fast-food chain wrote, referring to the Kennedy-backed 'Make America Healthy Again' movement.
