President Donald Trump signed an executive order on April 18 that will establish a pathway that gives people with mental illnesses access to psychedelic drugs, including ibogaine compounds.
The executive order signed on Saturday morning aimed to accelerate research and approval of psychedelic drugs that could save lives and help reverse the mental illness plaguing America, according to the order.
“It’s for a lot of people, but it’s for our military in particular,” Trump said on Saturday before he signed the order.
“The suicide epidemic among veterans is a national tragedy. Since 9/11, we’ve lost over 21 times more veteran lives to suicide than on the battlefield.”
The order suggested that innovative methods were needed to find long-term solutions for Americans who suffer from mental illnesses, depression, and substance abuse disorders who either relapse or don’t fully respond to standard medical and psychiatric therapies.
“Psychedelic drugs, including ibogaine compounds, show potential in clinical studies to address serious mental illnesses for patients whose conditions persist after completing standard therapy,” the executive order stated.
Ibogaine, a plant-based psychoactive compound, safely led to improvements in depression, anxiety, and functioning among veterans with traumatic brain injuries, according to a 2024 study by Stanford Medicine researchers.
“Thousands of veterans are having to travel to Mexico or other countries to experiment with interventions that hold great promise but for which our knowledge is still insufficient,” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said at the White House.
“This executive order will remove the legal impediments that blocked American researchers, scientists, physicians, and clinicians from properly studying these medicines.”
Comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan sent Trump ibogaine data, which explained how treatments can improve a person’s life.
“I sent him that information, the text message came back, ‘Sounds great. Do you want FDA approval? Let’s do it,’” Rogan said while at the signing of the executive order on Saturday.
“It was literally that quick. These drugs are illegal not because they’re harmful, they’re illegal because of the 1970 Controlled Substances Act.”
According to research published in the National Library of Medicine, 80 percent of people who went to Mexico between 2012 and 2015 for ibogaine treatment said it eliminated or drastically reduced withdrawal symptoms from opioids.
The data noted that “very few studies have reported the effectiveness of ibogaine as a treatment for chronic opioid use.”
The Department of Health and Human Services will allocate at least $50 million from existing funds to work with states that have developed or are developing programs to advance psychedelic drugs for serious mental illnesses.