Missouri Lawmakers Pass Bill Supporting Psychedelics Research To Aid Military Veterans And First Responders

“This is a careful bill for people, our veterans and first responders, who have carried extraordinary burdens.”

By Rebecca Rivas, Missouri Independent

After four years of trying, the Missouri House passed legislation Thursday that would require the state to conduct a study on using psilocybin—also known as “magic mushrooms”—and other alternative therapies to treat depression, substance use or as part end-of-life care.

Veterans and first-responders would be able to possess the psychedelic if they’re enrolled in a study, where it would be administered by a facilitator.

Despite overwhelming support for the idea in past years, Thursday marks the first time the House has sent the bill on to the Senate, with a vote of 137 to 11.

Lawmakers amended the legislation last week to include ibogaine, a powerful psychoactive compound derived from an African shrub that’s used to treat addiction, PTSD and traumatic brain injury.

Republican state Rep. Renee Reuter of Imperial gave an emotional account of her husband’s struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder during House debate last week. After serving overseas in the U.S. Army in 1993, her husband’s PTSD has “enticed him to do certain things” that have destroyed their marriage and lives.

“When he left in 1993 I told my husband, ‘You do whatever you have to do, but come home,’” Reuter said. “In ‘94 when my husband came home, he didn’t come all the way home.”

Her son has also been deployed three times overseas and experiences PTSD as well.

“Let’s do this for those men and women,” she said. “Let’s give them whatever it is that we need to give them to help them and their families continue to live and be productive members of society.”

While the bill was originally focused on helping veterans, Republican state Rep. Matthew Overcast pushed to expand the bill to also include first responders.

In 2020, Overcast worked for a company that handled staffing for nurses in New York hospitals, and he saw how the pandemic impacted the hospital workers.

“I can tell you from walking through some of those nursing wards,” said Overcast, who is also a veteran. “There was more death that they saw in those few months when it first hit, than even some of our own soldiers have seen in a war.”

This bill requires the Missouri Department of Mental Health to provide grants totaling $2 million for the research on alternative therapies, subject to lawmakers approving the appropriation.

The state would collaborate on the study with a Missouri university hospital or medical center operated by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in Missouri. The focus of the treatment is on veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, substance use disorders, or for those who require end-of-life care.

The suicide rate among veterans in Missouri is nearly double the state rate and one of the highest in the country.

“This is a careful bill for people, our veterans and first responders, who have carried extraordinary burdens that most of us could only be we can’t really even imagine,” Overcast said, “and they endured significant trauma, not only in service to our communities, but to our country as well. It is measured, it is compassionate and it is accountable.”

The bill’s sponsor, Republican state Rep. Richard West of Wentzville, said as a former police officer, he was skeptical of alternative therapies at first. But he’s read the study results and believes states should support furthering the research.

That includes studies done by psychiatry researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, who were the first in Missouri to give a legal dose of psilocybin in 2019.

They have been using a brain-imaging technique to learn how psilocybin affects certain networks in the brain.

Republican State Rep. Dave Griffith of Jefferson City, a veteran who has supported the measure for several years, said it was appropriate to add first responders as eligible participants.

“I think the most important thing about this bill is going to be done under a controlled atmosphere,” Griffith said, before the House passed the bill Thursday. “There needs to be safeguards put in place for them. [West] set up all those guardrails for us, so I’d ask somebody to support this bill.”

This story was first published by Missouri Independent.

Marijuana Rescheduling Could ‘Unlock Research’ To Treat Rare Diseases, Father Of Terminally Ill Child Tells Congressional Committee

Congressional lawmakers were recently presented with a unique argument in favor of expanding therapeutic access to cannabis and rescheduling marijuana under federal law: Doing so could mitigate threats associated with Chinese Community Party (CCP) operatives.

At a hearing before the House Small Business Committee last month, members took expert testimony on a variety of challenges linked to CCP, including intellectual property theft, foreign investments and vulnerabilities in the supply chain that impact small U.S. companies.

The hearing—titled “Defending Main Street: Combating CCP Threats to America’s Small Businesses” Summary”—involved testimony from Sean Murphy, founder of the nonprofit organization Kompassion that focuses on palliative care and rare diseases afflicting children.

Murphy said his personal experience raising a child with a severe health condition as well as volunteering in veterans hospices informed his advocacy for cannabinoid research and reform. That includes a proposal to move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) to “unlock research and healing, especially for rare diseases,” he said.

Rescheduling wouldn’t federally legalize cannabis, but it would remove certain Schedule I research barriers, while benefitting state-licensed marijuana businesses by allowing them to take federal tax deductions they’re currently barred from under an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) code known as 280E.

The incremental change “will be a monumental movement in research and development of cures,” Murphy said in a written testimony submitted to the committee. And while marijuana remains Schedule I, President Donald Trump signed an executive order in December directing the attorney general to quickly finalize its reclassification under a process that was initiated under the Biden administration.

As part of his testimony for the committee hearing, Murphy also included policy recommendations that he argued would help address lawmakers’ concerns by empowering U.S. entrepreneurs and small business owners in healthcare, while generally expanding their access to capital.

One of the recommendations involves targeted funding for energetic medicine, palliative care and cannabinoid research through the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

With funding for ARPA-H currently at $1.5 billion for the 2026 fiscal year, a portion should be side aside to “explicitly” support initiatives such as cannabinoid research, “including new therapeutic pathways made possible by marijuana’s rescheduling from Schedule I to Schedule III,” the testimony says.

“All mammals possess an endocannabinoid system (ESC) that plays a central role in inflammation reduction and homeostasis; targeted research in this area would unlock breakthrough whole-health approaches that treat the body’s nervous and endocannabinoid system, while supporting veteran and family care, all while keeping IP and data 100 percent secure from foreign exploitation,” it says.

Cannabis policy also intersected with a congressional hearing focused on foreign threats last year, when a GOP-led House committee looked at challenges associated with Chinese criminal organizations behind large-scale illicit marijuana grows.

Leveraging the increasing attention to the issue, the prohibitionist group Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) put out an ad in July arguing that if President Donald Trump moved forward with a pending cannabis rescheduling proposal, it would empower Chinese cartels.

In 2023, a major marijuana lobbying firm apologized after sending a letter to Senate committee leadership concerning a bipartisan cannabis banking bill that contained “inappropriate” references to investments from China in a “misguided attempt” to push for amendments expanding the legislation.

Louisiana Senators Approve Bill To Allow Medical Marijuana Use In Hospitals For Terminally Ill Patients

A Louisiana Senate panel has advanced a bill to allow patients with terminal and irreversible conditions to use medical marijuana in hospitals.

The Senate Health and Welfare Committee approved the legislation, SB 270 from Sen. Katrina Jackson-Andrews (D), with amendments, in a voice vote on Wednesday.

“This bill was brought at the request of constituents who believe that therapeutic medical marijuana, which is already legal in this state, should be offered in hospitals when patients are terminally ill or otherwise in need the comfort of this medicine,” Jackson-Andrews said ahead of the vote.

Under the proposal, hospitals would have to create written guidelines allowing covered patients to consume medical cannabis on-site in forms other than smoking or vaping.

Under an amendment adopted by the panel, emergency or outpatient departments would be exempted from the policy. The revised legislation also clarifies that patients and primary caregivers are responsible for acquiring and administering medical marijuana, which must be “stored securely at all times in a locked container provided by the patient.”

Health care professionals and staff would be prohibited from “administering, storing, retrieving, or assisting the patient with the medical marijuana,” the text says.

The amendment, which the sponsor worked on with help from the Louisiana Hospital Association, also allows hospitals to opt out of the policy if federal officials take action against any healthcare facility in the state over medical cannabis use, rather than only allowing those that were specifically targeted to stop complying.

—Marijuana Moment is tracking hundreds of cannabis, psychedelics and drug policy bills in state legislatures and Congress this year. Patreon supporters pledging at least $25/month get access to our interactive maps, charts and hearing calendar so they don’t miss any developments.

Learn more about our marijuana bill tracker and become a supporter on Patreon to get access.—

Meanwhile in Louisiana, the Senate Health and Welfare Committee last week approved a bill to create a psychedelic-assisted therapy pilot program, using opioid settlement dollars to fund clinical trials aimed at developing alternative treatments such as psilocybin and ibogaine.

Lawmakers are also considering a bill to create an adult-use marijuana legalization pilot program in the state to determine whether the reform should eventually be expanded and permanently codified.