VA Secretary Collins and Rep. Luna discuss psychedelic drug treatment for veterans

MADEIRA BEACH — Military veterans with PTSD and other mental health conditions may soon be able to use psychedelic drugs to aid in their treatment.

In April, President Trump signed an executive order directing health regulators to speed up reviews of psychedelic treatments and allocate more funding for research into their use.

“I think we’re making massive progress in how we diagnose things, but also how we do new treatments, which in the past was more of a wait-and-see approach, and now we’re being more cutting-edge,” U.S. Secretary of Veteran Affairs Doug Collins said Wednesday.

Collins spoke with reporters after attending a roundtable discussion with military veterans at American Legion Post 273 in Pinellas County with Republican U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna.

The VA is involved in 20 active clinical trials focused on psychedelic therapies.

The first clinical study of psilocybin-assisted therapy in veterans with PTSD was released this week. It found that nine out of 12 veterans no longer met diagnostic criteria for PTSD one month after treatment. Psilocybin is a psychedelic compound found in mushrooms.

The findings revealed “that PAT (Psilocybin-assisted therapy) is safe, well-tolerated, and shows preliminary clinical improvement for PTSD, suggesting that PAT may offer therapeutic relief for Veterans with severe treatment-resistant PTSD,” wrote researchers at the Center for Psychedelic Drug Research and Education in Columbus, Ohio.

“The science does show that it’s effective but it’s not like, ‘Hey, just give them a pill and send them home,’” said Luna, a U.S. Air Force veteran. “There’s a lot that goes into that treatment —also something that I think has been brought to the forefront.”

She gave credit to the Trump administration for considering alternative medical treatments for veterans with PTSD, saying “that would not have happened had people like the secretary, President Trump, and also Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pushing that, and those impacts it has on veterans’ long-term [care] in preventing suicide is incredible.”

News reporters were not invited to attend the roundtable itself, but Luna said the topic of psychedelic therapy “was actually something that was discussed by them, and you will see those suicide numbers go down, which is really ultimately our biggest concern right now.”

PTSD affects 6% of U.S. adults but somewhere between 10%-30% of U.S. military veterans, according to the National Center for PTSD.