Just say yes to psychedelics research
Brian Lehrer: A Daily Politics Podcast
WNYC Studios
4.4 • 675 Ratings
🗓️ 21 April 2026
⏱️ 17 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | from WNYC Studios. I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Tuesday, April 21st. |
| 0:15.2 | Did you catch the announcement by President Trump over the weekend that he's going to make it |
| 0:20.0 | easier to research the potential |
| 0:21.7 | health benefits of certain psychedelic drugs. These include LSD, MDMA, also known as |
| 0:29.0 | Ecstasy or Molly, psilocybin, and ibogaine. Veterans groups have been especially interested in this |
| 0:35.8 | after some reported success treating war-induced |
| 0:39.7 | PTSD. At the announcement, Trump was flanked by several of his health-related appointees, |
| 0:45.6 | RFK Jr. and others, but the origin story of this announcement came from perhaps a surprising source, |
| 0:52.2 | who was there, the podcaster Joe Rogan. |
| 0:55.0 | Here's 40 seconds of what he said. |
| 0:57.6 | I sent President Trump some information. |
| 1:00.4 | We have a gigantic opiate problem in this country, obviously. |
| 1:03.9 | In 2024, more than 80,000 people died of overdoses. |
| 1:08.3 | It's a horrible number. |
| 1:10.3 | And there's more than 5 million people that are addicted |
| 1:13.6 | to opiates right now in this country. With one dose of IBA gain, more than 80% of people |
| 1:19.3 | are free of that addiction. With two doses, it's more than 90%. I sent him that information. |
| 1:25.6 | The text message came back, sounds great. Do you want FDA approval? |
| 1:30.1 | Let's do it. It was literally that quick. Yeah, it was that quick. Podcaster with connections, |
| 1:37.2 | call us the president. The president says, hey, cool man, let's do it. And poof. But to be fair, |
| 1:43.0 | the executive order does not legalize any of those drugs for |
| 1:46.6 | treatment. It makes it easier to research them. That includes risks as well as benefits. And frankly, |
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