By Rebecca Rivas, Missouri Independent
The Missouri House passed HB 1717 on Thursday 137–11, sending to the Senate for the first time after four years of attempts a bill requiring the state to study psilocybin and other alternative therapies for treating depression, substance use disorders, and end-of-life care in veterans and first responders.
Enrolled participants could possess psilocybin—commonly called "magic mushrooms"—with the substance administered by a facilitator. Lawmakers amended the measure last week to also include ibogaine, a psychoactive compound derived from an African shrub used to address addiction, PTSD, and traumatic brain injury.
The Missouri Department of Mental Health would award $2 million in grants for the research, subject to legislative appropriation. The state would partner with a Missouri university hospital or a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs medical center in Missouri, with a focus on veterans with PTSD, depression, substance use disorders, or end-of-life needs. Missouri's veteran suicide rate is nearly double the statewide rate and ranks among the highest in the country.
Bill sponsor Republican state Rep. Richard West of Wentzville, a former police officer, said initial skepticism gave way after reviewing study results, including research by psychiatry faculty at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis—the first in Missouri to administer a legal psilocybin dose, in 2019—who use brain imaging to examine how the compound affects brain networks.
Republican state Rep. Renee Reuter of Imperial described her husband's PTSD following U.S. Army service overseas in 1993. Republican state Rep. Matthew Overcast, a veteran who worked during the 2020 pandemic for a nursing staffing company serving New York hospitals, pushed to extend eligibility from veterans to first responders. "I can tell you from walking through some of those nursing wards," Overcast said, "there was more death that they saw in those few months when it first hit, than even some of our own soldiers have seen in a war."
"This is a careful bill for people, our veterans and first responders, who have carried extraordinary burdens that most of us could only be we can't really even imagine," Overcast said, "and they endured significant trauma, not only in service to our communities, but to our country as well. It is measured, it is compassionate and it is accountable."
Republican state Rep. Dave Griffith of Jefferson City, a veteran who has backed the measure for several years, said the bill's controlled administration framework and guardrails made it worthy of support.