Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover politics. I'm

Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And NPR health correspondent, Will Stone, is back with us.

Hello, Will. Hey there. Today on the show, President Trump signed an executive order to fast-track medical research into psychedelic drugs after a push by podcaster and influencer Joe Rogan.

This is what Rogan said during the signing ceremony in the Oval Office this past weekend.

I sent him that information. The text message came back.

Sounds great.

Do you want FDA approval?

Let's do it.

It was literally that quick.

We will get to the Rogan of it all in a moment. But Will, what kind of drugs are we talking about here?

And why is this something that would rise to the level of the president?

Sure. I mean, we're talking about MDMA, psilocybin, LSD, other kinds of psychedelics.

We've seen this real revival, a renaissance of research into these compounds, you know, after many

years when that was shut down because of the war on drugs.

And really in the past decade, institutions all over the country and researchers have set up centers to study psychedelics.

We have biotech companies investing in these therapies for a lot of different mental health conditions, in particular

depression, PTSD, substance use disorder anxiety. And so there are a lot of caveats here.

You know, the research still has a long way to go and there's a lot of hype. But there really

are at this point promising data from some of these trials. And we could see, you know, FDA approval in the near future for some of these substances.

So other than Joe Rogan, who is pushing for this?

Well, a big and very prominent voice in the movement have been these veterans groups.

It's been actually pivotal, it seems.

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