House approves Veterans Medical Marijuana Access and Psychedelics Research Amendments as Part of Spending Bill

The U.S. House of Representatives approved amendments to an extensive spending bill, which would allow doctors at the Department of Veterans Affairs to recommend medical marijuana to veterans. They also approved research on substances such as psilocybin or MDMA.

On Wednesday, just one day after the House Rules Committee approved the measures for consideration on the floor they were passed by the House and are now part of the appropriations bill covering Military Construction and Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies.

Reps. Brian Mast (R-FL), Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Dave Joyce(R-OH), and Barbara Lee (D-CA) filed the medical cannabis measure. Brian Mast, Earl Blumenauer (D.OR), Dave Joyce and Barbara Lee passed the medical cannabis measure in a vote by voice.

The amendment was cosponsored later by Reps. Jim McGovern, D-MA and Matt Gaetz, R-FL. It would prohibit the use VA funds for enforcing provisions of a directive that currently bars doctors from recommending medical cannabis to veterans.

Mast explained that veterans face a Department of Veterans Affairs which does not allow them to work with their doctors and post-deployment centers in order to discuss medical treatment options. If they are not working with their doctor to do this, you need to ask who they will be working with for medical treatment.

Blumenauer stated that “veterans from Oregon and across the nation have shared with me powerful stories about how medical marijuana has saved their life and provided relief from war wounds seen and unseen.”

“These veterans also expressed their fears about what would happen if they worked with the VA doctors in order to integrate their cannabis use into treatment plans. “The VA is denying veterans this option of care by not allowing providers to complete forms that comply with state medical marijuana laws,” said he. This is a disservice to those who risk their lives. VA forces veterans to self-medicate or seek out care outside of the VA. “Our veterans are paying for Congress’s inaction.”

Joyce spoke out in support of the amendment as well, saying that he was “proud” to be leading my colleagues’ efforts to provide medical care to our nation’s veterans.

He said, “I have seen first-hand the challenges that our nation’s heroes experience when they return to their home.” “We must all work together to expand the access to medical treatments to address the mental and physical challenges that our nation’s vets face.”

The measure was passed even though Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, former chairperson of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and Rep. John Carter, R-TX, both opposed it for practical reasons, stating that it would put VA doctors at risk if they filled out forms to suggest medical cannabis to vets.

No one asked for a recorded voice vote to contest the measure’s passing.

The amendment was revised before the Rules Committee met on Tuesday. The amendment shared the same text as , an amendment approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee for the chamber’s version last month. The House’s proposal would have been more likely to become law if it hadn’t changed. But now, there will need to be bipartisan discussion and bicameral debate about which version, if any will be passed.

Why wouldn’t you have the right to discuss medical cannabis with your doctor if it is legal in your area? This is the reality of thousands of veterans receiving their VA care.

My amendment would allow VA physicians to discuss all treatment options with their patients pic.twitter.com/GyImVcqqDc

Rep. Brian Mast July 26th, 2023

Recent sessions have seen both chambers pass legislation allowing VA doctors to recommend medical cannabis to their patients. Both the House and Senate adopted different versions of reform in their respective spending bills, but neither was included in the final conference report after negotiations.

The House adopted an amendment by voice vote from Reps. Lou Correa, (D-CA), and Jack Bergman, (R-MI), which would encourage the research of the therapeutic potentials of certain psychedelics.

Bergman, who spoke on the floor, said that if psychedelic therapy could help a veteran with PTSD or stop them from committing suicide, we owed it to them to play a role in research into these potentially life-saving therapies. This amendment will unlock treatments that have shown to cure PTSD, something that current medicine and modern psychological have not been able to do. It will also give our veterans a shot at living a long happy life.

Correa, instead of using the “opposition” time allotted to him to speak in favor of the measure, used it to speak for the proposal.

Let’s get down to business. “Let’s ensure that the VA takes the studies and brings back data, so that we create a program to take care of our Veterans,” said the congressman. Veterans have fought to protect our freedom. It is time to continue to do our part and fulfill our moral duty to care for them.

The lawmakers are co-founders of a Congressional Psychedelics Caucus, which promotes the research of entheogenic drugs. They Promoted the Measure on Monday before the Rules Committee Meeting.

The Bergman-Correa bill does not mention psychedelics specifically, but instead increases and decreases the funding of an unrelated section of the bill. This is a tactic used by lawmakers to communicate to federal agencies their key priorities while not actually changing the legislative text.

The summary of this proposal, posted by the Rules Committee, states that it “increases and reduces the Medical and Prosthetic Research Account at the Department of Veterans Affairs in order to ensure the VA conducts a large-scale study into the efficacy of medications with FDA-designated breakthrough therapy status to treat Post-traumatic Stress Disorder through VA-administered Drug Assisted Therapy Trials.”

A report that was attached to the spending bill of the House Appropriations Committee includes a section that states that “VA clarified that VA statutes and regulations do not specifically prohibit a veteran who earns income from state-legalized marijuana activities from receiving a certificate of VA eligibility for home loan benefits.”

The vote on Wednesday to approve the amendments is one of the few signs of progress in cannabis and psychedelics legislation within the GOP-controlled House. Some feared that modest proposals would be blocked by the Rules Committee after the panel recently rejected more than a dozen amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act.

The Rules panel blocked the advancement of additional amendments to the current MilCon/VA Bill that would have ended the practice of drug-testing job applicants at some federal agencies for marijuana and addressed VA medical marijuana separately.

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Democrat senators, meanwhile, are trying to pass a number of marijuana reform amendments in their version of the NDAA.

One of the proposals led by Sen. Brian Schatz, (D-HI), allows veterans to use medical marijuana in states and territories that allow it. This is similar to a separate bill that Senator Schatz introduced back in April.

The law would also protect doctors who fill out and discuss paperwork to recommend medical cannabis for veterans. It would also require that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs support clinical trials to investigate the therapeutic effects of marijuana in treating conditions like pain and post-traumatic disorder (PTSD), which commonly affect veterans.

Separately the Senate Appropriations Committee also released a recent report for its VA Spending Legislation which includes language calling for the department to facilitate access to medical marijuana for veterans and investigate the therapeutic potential for psychedelics.

House and Senate Appropriators have approved large-scale spending bills, which include once again language to protect medical cannabis programs in states, as well as an controversial rider that blocks Washington, D.C.’s implementation of a regulated marijuana sale system.