A White House executive order on psychedelics, signed by President Donald Trump on Saturday, aims to speed up research on drugs like psilocybin, MDMA and ibogaine, helping to legitimize an industry that's long lived largely underground.
But it also raises a broader question: Will psychedelics fall victim, like cannabis has, to a slow-moving federal process?
The latest executive order comes roughly four months after an effort by President Trump to reschedule cannabis, opening the door to greater research and investment opportunities. But since that directive, progress to reclassify cannabis has largely stalled, with the Drug Enforcement Administration review still ongoing and no final decision on moving marijuana from Schedule I to the lesser Schedule III. The delay reflects how drug policy often slows once it enters interagency review, where scientific evaluation, legal standards and politics meet.
"The process has certainly been slow and frustrating for stakeholders when you consider they have spent decades fighting marijuana's outrageous 1970s-era misclassification," said Shawn Hauser, partner at cannabis law firm Vicente LLP.
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