Various journalists who write on the topic highlight what they think the conversation will be in 2025

To kick off the new year, we at The Microdose asked a handful of journalists who closely follow and regularly report on the psychedelics beat to answer a few questions: What is one psychedelics story you will be following in 2025? Why?

These are smart, thoughtful people who ask a lot of questions. Here is what they are thinking about for the year ahead.

Erin Schumaker, future of health reporter at Politico

After a roller-coaster year for psychedelics policy, my sights are set on the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2025.

My conversations with members of Congress, researchers and lobbyists early this year returned to a single question: Would the Food and Drug Administration approve Lykos’ MDMA-assisted therapy application?

It was an inflection point. When the FDA turned down Lykos’ application in August, everything shifted. Lykos laid off staff and gutted top leadership. Competitors turned skittish. My conversations now increasingly focused on the VA, which for the first time since the 1960s was putting money behind studying psychedelics.

With a pause at the FDA, my sources said, the VA was now the primary place in government where psychedelics could move. The agency also had a secret weapon: VA Undersecretary for Health Dr. Shereef Elnahal, who championed the agency’s psychedelics research and worked behind the scenes with lawmakers to advance it.

But with President-elect Donald Trump’s win, Elnahal may soon be out of a job.

If Trump asks him to stay, Elnahal told me he would gladly do so, and would further the psychedelics research his agency’s doing now. With or without him, the VA’s research will continue, he stressed. Studies are ongoing and millions of dollars in VA-funded psychedelics research are slated to be awarded next year. But if Trump replaces Elnahal, as he is likely to do, those who have worked with the undersecretary say it will take more effort to advance psychedelics without him.

Veterans advocates are cautiously optimistic about Republicans controlling Congress and the White House in 2025. Should Trump want to boost psychedelic medicine, he has allies in Congress, including Reps. Jack Bergman (R-Mich.), Morgan Luttrell (R-Texas) and Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), who are eager to fast-track approval of MDMA-assisted therapy for veterans.

Trump hasn’t taken a position on psychedelics, but the president-elect has surrounded himself with advisors, like Elon Musk, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., his pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, who are critical of the FDA’s approach to regulating them.

I’ll be watching closely to see whether Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement embraces psychedelics as part of its wellness and natural medicine agenda.

Shayla Love, staff writer at The Atlantic

Read the article at 

https://themicrodose.substack.com/p/what-is-one-psychedelics-story-you



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