A congressional committee is set to vote this week on a GOP-led bill that would instruct the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to notify Congress if any psychedelics are added to its formulary of covered prescription drugs.
About a month after the House Veterans’ Affairs Health Subcommittee held an initial hearing on the legislation from Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI), members will mark up the bill on Tuesday.
The panel had also discussed a measure from the subcommittee chair Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA) during last month’s hearing, but that proposal isn’t on the Tuesday markup agenda—even though VA voiced support for it on the condition that certain amendments were made.
VA came out against the psychedelics bill that is getting a vote, arguing that it’s “unnecessary.”
The bill states that VA must report to Congress on the addition of any psychedelic medicines to its formulary within 180 days of their federal approval by Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The report would need to include “the determination of the Secretary whether to include such drug in the formulary of the Department,” as well as “the justification of the Secretary for such determination,” the bill text says.
Currently, there are no psychedelic drugs that are federally approved to prescribe as medicine. But that could soon change, as FDA recently agreed to review a new drug application for MDMA-assisted therapy on an expedited basis. The agency has also designated psilocybin, and more recently an LSD-like compound, as “breakthrough therapies.”
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