Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said there will be an “enormous demand” for psychedelic therapies as they become legally available.
He made the comments on the latest episode of a podcast he hosts for HHS, where he interviewed Bryan Hubbard, the CEO of Americans for Ibogaine.
“One of the challenges that we will also face in the federal government [is] there’s going to be a demand for it,” Kennedy said of psychedelics. He noted that if the treatments become available for veterans, “you need for every veteran treated approximately more than 100 hours of support staff.”
“So there’s an expense attached to it,” he said.
Kennedy cited an executive order that President Donald Trump signed earlier this year to streamline research and access into psychedelic medicine. “I can’t picture any other president in American history who would have done what he did. He turned on a dime,” Kennedy said.
He said Trump “got it in his head that this was something that he wanted to do.” Kennedy said Trump talked to veterans in the Oval Office during the executive order signing, and that Joe Rogan introduced him to some of those veterans.
“He just became convinced,” Kennedy said, referring to the podcaster who texted the president about psychedelics days before he signed the order. “I think he broke down a lot of barriers in doing that,” Kennedy said.
The president’s move “opens up all kinds of possibilities or and pathways for evidence-based research into psychedelics,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy said he thinks “most Americans” view psychedelics with a negative bias. “This was hippie stuff from back in the 60s and that it was recreational,” he said of their view.
He admitted he is surprised to hear stories of people taking ibogaine once and changing their lives without using it again. “It’s hard for me to believe that you can do something once and…that you can then live off the laurels of that kind of spiritual realignment,” he said.
Kennedy said earlier this year that the Trump administration is “very anxious” to create a pathway for access to psychedelics therapy. In an interview on the Joe Rogan Experience in February, he said officials are developing rules to enable patients with PTSD and depression to access substances like psilocybin and MDMA in a “very controlled setting.”
“I think that we’re going to get it done,” Kennedy said on the Joe Rogan Experience.
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