Once feared as a gateway to societal collapse, psychedelics are being reimagined as a medical breakthrough — a transformation that came into sharp focus last month when President Donald Trump signed an executive order accelerating access to drugs that 60 years ago put a Harvard psychologist before a hostile Senate subcommittee.
From Moral Panic to Medical Promise
On 13 May 1966, Senator Ted Kennedy interrogated Dr Timothy Leary, a former Harvard clinical psychologist branded “the most dangerous man in America”, about the dangers of LSD. “This is a dangerous drug – is that right?” Kennedy asked. “No, sir. LSD is not a dangerous drug,” Leary replied. Kennedy remained unconvinced; the committee saw psychedelics as the engine of the hippy movement, anti-war protests and social breakdown. Within a few years, President Richard Nixon banned the substances as part of his war on drugs.
Earlier this month, almost exactly six decades later, Kennedy’s nephew, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, stood behind President Trump in the Oval Office as he signed an executive order designed to accelerate the development and medical use of psychedelic drugs. The order directs the Food and Drug Administration and the Drug Enforcement Administration to reduce restrictions on research and expedite review of psychedelic compounds. A particular focus is ibogaine, a psychoactive compound derived from a West African shrub that scientists believe can treat chronic mental-health problems, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, addiction and traumatic brain injury. Podcaster Joe Rogan, a vocal proponent of ibogaine for veterans, stood beside Kennedy Jr and later told the press that he had encouraged the president to sign the order via text message.
The executive order did not come from nowhere. It reflects a decades-long shift in the image of psychedelics — from markers of countercultural decadence to potentially transformative mental-health treatments backed by clinical research. Veterans groups have spent years lobbying for access to psychedelics to treat PTSD, and some police officers have recently joined those calls. “At the federal level, this is more supported by the Republicans than the Democrats,” argued Rick Perry, the former ultra-conservative governor of Texas turned psychedelics evangelist, in 2023. Psychedelics, once the preserve of anti-war lefties, have become a healthcare innovation backed by a rightwing president.
The New Alliance: Silicon Valley, Veterans and the White House
What changed? The most significant factor is the accumulation of scientific evidence. A 2024 Stanford University study published in Nature Medicine found that ibogaine treatment combined with magnesium led to significant improvements in PTSD, depression and anxiety symptoms among 30 US military veterans with traumatic brain injury. Such results have turned traditionally conservative communities into advocates for reform. Yet safety concerns remain: ibogaine can cause fatal cardiac arrhythmias, and US research was halted in the 1990s because of those risks. The executive order establishes a pathway for eligible patients to access investigational psychedelics under the FDA’s Right to Try rule, and includes a provision to accelerate the potential rescheduling of Schedule I substances that complete Phase 3 trials.
Perhaps the biggest driver of change, however, is the recognition that there is money to be made. Forbes predicts that the psychedelic mushroom market will surpass $3.3bn by 2031, with a compound annual growth rate of 10.3% between 2024 and 2031. Other projections estimate the market will reach $1.8bn in 2026 and $3.0bn by 2033, with the US market alone forecast to reach $11.3bn by 2035. Venture capitalists invested nearly $180m in psychedelic biotechs in 2024, following a record $528m in 2021. “We have the solution for the biggest problem in healthcare,” the German biotech investor Christian Angermayer explained in a recent interview, pointing to the rising prevalence of mental-health disorders. Global data indicates that approximately 970 million people worldwide were living with a mental disorder in 2019, and suicide accounted for an estimated 727,000 deaths in 2021. With diagnoses of PTSD and depression rising, cutting-edge mental-health treatments could become as lucrative as Ozempic proved in a world gripped by an obesity crisis.
Look behind the psychedelics renaissance and you see familiar names from the tech oligarchy that has dominated the 21st-century economy. In 2020, Peter Thiel backed a $125m funding round for a psychedelic mental-health startup. In 2024, Google co-founder Sergey Brin invested $15m in Soneira, a company developing ibogaine for traumatic brain injury, including synthetic versions and combinations with heart medications to mitigate cardiac risks. Brin’s investment vehicle, Catalyst4, also focuses on neurological disorders and climate change technologies. It is no surprise that Silicon Valley has been so bullish on psychedelics: in the aftermath of the 1960s, California computer scientists saw experimenting with psychedelics and exploring new technological frontiers as part of the same counterculture. Apple’s Steve Jobs, Microsoft’s Bill Gates and OpenAI’s Sam Altman have all spoken publicly about their own psychedelic use, helping to mainstream what was once a fringe pursuit.
The Billion-Dollar Psychedelic Market
The executive order itself contains mechanisms to accelerate the commercial pipeline. The FDA is instructed to provide Commissioner’s National Priority Vouchers for psychedelic drugs that have received Breakthrough Therapy designation, potentially shortening approval timelines to one or two months. The order also allocates $50m to match state investments in psychedelic research programs — a move that echoes Texas’s earlier $50m commitment to ibogaine research. At the state level, Oregon and Colorado have led the way: Oregon’s Psilocybin Services Act was approved in November 2020, and Colorado voters adopted Proposition 122 in November 2022, both allowing regulated therapeutic access. Some 22 other states are now considering similar legislation.
Trump’s own posture captured the remarkable cultural reversal. When signing the order, he quipped about ibogaine: “Can I have some, please? I’ll take it.” The moment must have left more traditional Republicans wondering if they had been spiked with hallucinogens themselves. While drug policy reform now draws support from both Democrats and Maga Republicans, it is the alliance of the second Trump administration with Silicon Valley that is fundamentally behind the acceleration.
Leary famously believed that psychedelics would help people “turn on, tune in, drop out” of conventional society. That ethos does not quite land in an era where psychedelics are discussed at Davos on panels about “brain capital and human flourishing”. The energy behind these drugs has moved from beatniks to biohackers, from flower power to finance capital. This may mean more people gain access to medicine capable of transforming lives. But it may also mean that, in Trump’s trippy second term, the future of mental-health treatment remains largely in the hands of the few.