Donald Trump has signed an executive order to fund research into substances such as LSD and explore their potential in the treatment of mental health problems. The move reopens debates about the legalization of drugs with a history of experimentation, attempted military uses, and now a medicalization that also raises questions.
US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on April 18 that will expand and fund research into the mental health applications of psychedelic substances. For the first time in decades, the federal government is not merely tolerating or indirectly funding psychedelic research — Trump has decided to promote it explicitly at the federal level, focusing primarily on ibogaine. In addition, clinical trials already underway with psilocybin and MDMA have been accelerated.
The argument is not merely cultural or spiritual, but clinical and highly political. Behind this order lies the treatment of post-traumatic stress in war veterans (a staggering $40 billion annual budget) and the opioid crisis, marked by the fentanyl epidemic. In 2023, a record 80,000 deaths were recorded.
Why Now?
To understand the scope of this shift, it helps to go back to 1943. In the heart of a Europe at war, Dr. Albert Hofmann accidentally synthesized and tested LSD. The pharmaceutical company Sandoz would later market it as Delysid — a drug widely distributed in Western democracies in those years. Today, psychedelic drug patents are evolving rapidly. In Spain under Franco, this history arrived in the mid-1950s, when psychiatrists such as Juan José López Ibor introduced LSD for therapeutic purposes.
LSD acts on serotonergic receptors, profoundly altering perception (sensory distortion) and the experience of the ‘self’ (to the extreme of dissolution). During its early years, these potentials made it interesting for Cold War military projects such as MK-Ultra and Project Bluebird, which sought to use LSD as a truth serum and for psychological warfare. As a weapon it failed, but its clinical applications proved promising. It was used as a ‘psychomimetic’ substance — not to cure, but to reproduce pathological states under controlled conditions.
The Medical Potential
Today, clinical trials point to the potential of psychedelics in treating resistant depression, post-traumatic stress, and addictions. However, they do not act as chemical correctors but by intensifying experience, loosening mental patterns, and reopening biographical processes. They are not a classic drug: they make it possible for something to happen, but the result depends on the framework and predisposition — what is known as set and setting.
The Hippie Route
In the 1960s, LSD moved out of institutions into the cultural world. On the West Coast, writer Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters made the experience a collective practice and way of life. On the East Coast, Timothy Leary translated it into a spiritual revolution, while Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs integrated it into a radical exploration of consciousness. The punitive reaction came swiftly: in 1971, Nixon declared the War on Drugs.
The Contemporary Moment
Since the 1990s, the ‘psychedelic renaissance’ presents itself as the correction of an anomaly — the War on Drugs — given that there is no scientific criterion that justifies the classification of psychedelics as dangerous: they do not cause addiction and do not produce death by overdose. Universities, start-ups, and organizations such as MAPS and the Beckley Foundation have invested millions in clinical trials.
Trump’s executive order crystallizes this process: from psychomimesis to psychopathologization, then to therapeutic institutionalization, bypassing the hippie variant. The field is now being opened to pharmaceutical companies to continue research and patents. In this framework, microdosing represents perfect integration: not seeking transformation but optimization — marginal performance improvement, adaptation without questioning. Hence the great enthusiasm and unconditional support from Silicon Valley.
The problem is not therapeutic relief, but the regime of truth it consolidates: only medically validated, protocolized, and commodified change is legitimate. Trump’s executive order does not legalize psychedelics but does reconfigure the field: it legitimizes research and redefines priorities. Full legalization remains off the agenda.
Source: ELPAIS.COM
