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Trump administration will fund new research on controversial psychedelic drug ibogaine

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Trump administration will fund new research on controversial psychedelic drug ibogaine

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Federal officials on Thursday announced new funding to explore the medical potential of ibogaine, a controversial psychedelic drug championed by veterans, conservative lawmakers and podcasters aligned with President Donald Trump.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said his department is awarding up to $4.9 million to prepare for the first U.S. studies of ibogaine for post-traumatic stress disorder, a hard-to-treat condition linked to higher suicide and substance abuse rates among veterans.

The money will not go directly to patient research, Kennedy said, but to lay the groundwork needed to manufacture and dose the drug and design studies of it.

Ibogaine is made from a shrub native to West Africa. It can cause intense hallucinations, nausea, vomiting, tremors and sometimes deadly irregular heart rhythms. Ibogaine is currently illegal, in the same ultrarestrictive class as LSD, ecstasy and most other psychedelic drugs.

Veterans organizations and psychedelic advocates contend that ibogaine has great promise for intractable conditions such as PTSD, severe depression and opioid addiction. U.S. research on the drug has essentially been frozen for decades due to ibogaine's restricted status.

Kennedy said the government will receive data and treatment guidance from Beond Inc., a Texas-based company that has treated more than 3,000 patients with ibogaine in Mexico, where the drug is not illegal.

"That is going to allow us to dramatically accelerate the clinical trial process," Kennedy said.


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