Washington hit the gas and the brakes in the same fortnight

The House psychedelics caucus put a federal plan on paper

On October 1 the Congressional Psychedelics Advancing Therapies (PATH) Caucus, co-chaired by Reps. Lou Correa (D-CA) and Jack Bergman (R-MI), released a white paper built from responses to its 2024 request for information. It makes 15 recommendations: national guidance for safe delivery, tiered credentialing so trained facilitators and peer supporters can work alongside licensed clinicians, a national adverse-event monitoring system, a path to Medicare, Medicaid and VA reimbursement, explicit protection for Indigenous and religious use, and guardrails against patents on natural compounds. "Seventy years of war on drugs has really tied us down," Correa told Marijuana Moment. Bergman's framing was narrower: "medical treatments administered by trained professionals in supervised clinical settings."

The FDA asked how psychedelic therapy should actually be delivered, and the public answered

The FDA's September 14 public hearing, "Considerations for Potential Future Therapeutic Use of Psychedelic Drugs," drew more than 18,000 registrations and about 80 speakers chosen from 200-plus requests, according to a Foley Hoag summary. The written docket (FDA-2026-N-7542) closed October 5. The agency asked about four things only: provider training and credentialing, patient safety, access and coverage, and data collection. Scheduling, legalization and decriminalization were off the table. The hearing follows Executive Order 14401 (April 18), which told agencies to expedite psychedelic research and review, and the FDA's April "national priority vouchers" for psilocybin in depression and methylone in PTSD.

The DEA tries again to ban five psychedelics, including one the FDA just fast-tracked

On September 23 the DEA published a proposed rule to put five tryptamines (4-OH-DiPT, 5-MeO-AMT, 5-MeO-MiPT, 5-MeO-DET and DiPT) into Schedule I, the category for drugs with "no currently accepted medical use." It's the same five compounds the DEA proposed in January 2022 and withdrew that July, after roughly 600 public comments and a fight over a hearing. This time the DEA leans on an updated HHS evaluation from April. Its evidence: 518 law-enforcement encounters in total, 65 poison-center exposures between 2000 and 2021, and one death, in 2004, in a person who had also taken alcohol and an antidepressant. Comments and hearing requests are due October 23. The twist: 4-OH-DiPT is the active compound behind luvesilocin, which the FDA granted Breakthrough Therapy status for postpartum depression on February 23, with a Phase 3 trial planned this year.

Oregon blinked on doubling its psilocybin fees, and the budget hole is still there

On September 22 the Oregon Health Authority said it will not adopt the fee increases it floated in June for the state's licensed psilocybin program, citing feedback from its advisory board and the public comment period. The plan would have doubled fees across the supply chain, including the application fee ($500 to $1,000) and the annual facilitator license ($2,000 to $4,000), and ended discounts for veterans and low-income applicants. State documents reported by the Oregon Capital Chronicle show the program is short about $3.8 million this budget cycle even without the increases, and licenses have dwindled since the program opened in 2023. The 2020 campaign promised the program would pay for itself through fees.

What it means for the Atlas

Oregon's entry gets a new note: fees held, shortfall unresolved, decision moved to the 2027 session. Its "small step" for residents was already "fully fund the program and protect it from rollback." It just got more specific.

California's first state money for psychedelic research goes to veterans

Governor Newsom signed Assembly Bill 113 on September 18, putting $4.7 million into psychedelic-assisted therapy research for veterans with PTSD, traumatic brain injury, addiction and other service-related conditions (bill text). The money runs through the California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine, which expects to issue a request for applications later this year, according to The Microdose. It's the state's first appropriation for this research, and the third year in a row California has passed a psychedelic research law, after bills easing study approvals in 2024 and 2025. Sen. Brian Jones (R-Santee) pushed the idea for three years before it was folded into the budget, per KPBS.

What it means for the Atlas

California's entry adds the appropriation to its momentum note and sources. Its rank doesn't move: research was already scored as active.

Can psychedelic trials be blinded after all? Four researchers say try harder

Josh Woolley and Andrew Krystal (UCSF), Kevin Yang (UC San Diego) and Boris Heifets (Stanford) published a JAMA Psychiatry perspective on September 16 proposing a masking strategy they call UMBRAA: combinations of approved drugs that produce an unfamiliar altered state, with participants told less about what's in the mix. "Heart stents and knee arthroscopy both looked effective until sham-controlled trials showed they weren't," Woolley said. It's a proposal, not a tested method; the authors flag the safety and ethics questions themselves.

A shorter yardstick for "did it change you?"

David Yaden's group at Johns Hopkins published a 17-item replacement for the persisting-effects questionnaire, a 140-plus-statement survey that trials have used for two decades without formal validation, The Microdose reports. Housekeeping, but the kind that decides whether the next decade of trial results can be compared.

Psychedelic users were more likely to be vegetarian. Don't read it as cause.

A Scientific Reports study (September 11) of about 21,800 people in two British birth cohorts found lifetime psilocybin or LSD use was associated with stronger pro-environmental attitudes and higher odds of a vegetarian diet. The correlation is small, the data are retrospective, and the authors say only that the drugs "may promote" those attitudes. We'd say: the kind of person who tries psychedelics may also be the kind who skips the steak.

The VA's big psilocybin trial is progress. Independent labs want in too.

Two Ohio State researchers argued in an op-ed (September 30) that the VA's PIVOT trial (about 240 veterans with treatment-resistant depression, five VA medical centers, Compass Pathways donating the psilocybin, running to about 2031) shouldn't crowd out academic research, since many veterans never enroll in VA care.