Veterans Groups Urge Congress To Expand Psychedelics And Marijuana Access To Mitigate Suicide Crisis

Capitol Hill’s new medicine cabinet

Veterans psychedelics access is no longer a backroom whisper—it’s the headline scrawled across Capitol Hill like a grease pencil on a deli slicer. At joint hearings of the House and Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committees, a phalanx of veterans service organizations dropped the same hard truth: the suicide crisis among those who served won’t fade with more of the same pills. The American Legion’s national commander, Dan Wiley, didn’t mince words. Ending veteran suicide is priority one, he said, and that means embracing alternatives—psychedelic-assisted therapy and marijuana included—because the standard playbook isn’t cutting it. Wiley even pointed to a ceremonious moment in the Oval Office, where President Donald Trump signed an executive order instructing the attorney general to reclassify cannabis to Schedule III. That bureaucratic train hasn’t reached the station yet—cannabis remains tightly controlled under federal law—but the signal is green for something long overdue: serious, federally supported research into whether cannabis can dial down the drivers of despair.

The blueprint: centers of excellence

Wounded Warrior Project went beyond rhetoric and showed Congress the map. Their “Innovative Therapies Centers of Excellence Act” would seed at least five VA hubs to rigorously test and deliver psychedelic-assisted therapy—MDMA, psilocybin, ibogaine, even ketamine—for conditions that hound veterans: PTSD, depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and substance use disorder. They called out something rare in policy testimony: hope, backed by data. Among veterans in VA care, suicide rates have dropped meaningfully for those treated for anxiety, depression, PTSD, and alcohol use disorder. Not victory. But proof that tailored, evidence-based care, delivered with urgency, can bend the curve. The ask is simple and unfashionable in a town that loves task forces and hates timelines: fund the science, build the clinics, report the findings, and if it works, scale it like lives depend on it—because they do.

• Stand up at least five VA “innovative therapies centers of excellence.”
• Study safety and efficacy of MDMA, psilocybin, ibogaine, and ketamine for PTSD, depression, anxiety, chronic pain, Parkinson’s disease, and SUD.
• Publish regular reports to Congress to guide access, training, and guardrails.
• Enable collaboration with academic medical centers under appropriate FDA pathways.
• Prioritize personalized care over one-size-fits-all protocols.

“A veteran doesn’t want another pill”

That line came like a cymbal crash from the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Their commander-in-chief, Carol Whitmore, flagged a generational shift: younger veterans are turning to marijuana and hallucinogens at higher rates than their older peers, not out of rebellion, but out of exhaustion with treatments that don’t move the needle. When Sen. Dan Sullivan leaned in on alternatives, the message back was plain—don’t make veterans start over; meet them where they are with modalities that actually work. Rep. Nancy Mace asked directly about psychedelics and heard a rare bit of Washington sincerity: leaders at Disabled American Veterans said they’re believers in novel therapies because they’ve lived the limitations of “traditional.” VFW, for its part, wants the whole menu scrutinized—stellate ganglion block, hyperbaric oxygen, ketamine infusion, MDMA-assisted therapy, and medical cannabis—because if the mission is recovery, ideology doesn’t belong in the operating room.

“A veteran doesn’t want another pill thrown at them.”

Policy’s gears, grinding

Here’s the terrain. DEA and FDA hold the keys on drug scheduling and approvals; VA runs the clinics; Congress writes checks and walls. Rescheduling cannabis to Schedule III wouldn’t solve everything, but it would bulldoze major barriers to federal research and clinical integration. In the meantime, the Innovative Therapies Centers of Excellence Act looks like a clean downpayment. It would put psychedelic therapy where it belongs—inside the VA, studied, supervised, and, if effective, delivered at scale. You can feel the policy aftershocks at the state level. Compassion is gaining ground in places like Oregon, where lawmakers advanced hospice access to medical cannabis—see Oregon Bill To Allow Medical Marijuana In Hospices Heads To Governor’s Desk. Utah is pushing the frontier for veterans with legislation to support clinical trials on psychedelics—read Utah Lawmakers Pass Bill To Support Clinical Trials On Psychedelics For Veterans’ Mental Health. But reform doesn’t move in a straight line: New Hampshire’s Senate iced a House-passed legalization bill (New Hampshire Senate Kills House-Passed Marijuana Legalization Bill), while Arizona lawmakers trimmed punitive proposals around odor complaints, a small but telling retreat from the culture war—details here: Arizona Senators Scale Back Bills To Punish Marijuana Users Over Excess Smoke Or Odor Complaints. The message in the mosaic: the country is testing boundaries, one chamber, one committee, one zip code at a time.

What progress looks like

Progress won’t feel like a parade. It’ll feel like paperwork and training modules, IRB approvals and data audits. It will be VA clinicians learning new protocols, veterans consenting to care that is hopeful but demanding, and Congress choosing evidence over optics. The playbook isn’t sexy, but it’s service: fund the centers; protect veterans from losing benefits over disclosed medical cannabis use where legal; publish transparent, peer-reviewed results; build clinical pathways that prioritize safety; and make access happen inside our borders, through VA, with equity baked in. It’s the kind of hard, granular work that actually saves lives. If you’re watching from the sidelines, wondering how to move from noise to nourishment, start by following the science—and, when you’re ready to explore compliant hemp options while policy catches up, you can find them here: https://thcaorder.com/shop/.