JD Vance Asks Joe Rogan For Advice On Providing Psychedelics Access To Veterans After Being ‘Fascinated’ By Drug War History Lesson

Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), former President Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate, says he’s “fascinated” by the therapeutic potential of psychedelics, asking podcaster Joe Rogan for advice on a creating a possible “pathway” for providing access to substances such as MDMA and psilocybin for military veterans with serious mental health conditions.

Vance told Rogan that his overall philosophy on marijuana and psychedelics is “live and let live,” and he reaffirmed that he feels people should not be criminalized over cannabis. The podcast host also gave the senator a history lesson on marijuana prohibition that Vance said he had “no idea” about.

While the candidate has previously discussed his position that states should have the right to set their own cannabis policies, this is the first time he’s publicly weighed in on laws around psychedelics, though he made clear he’s “not committing to some public policy” and needs to “be careful with this stuff, especially six days from an election.”

After Rogan described research on the medical value of psychedelics and the lack of access to such substances under the current federal drug scheduling statute—as well as the racially discriminatory history of marijuana prohibition—Vance said he “had never heard about” those particular points.

“I’m a veteran too. I spent four years in the Marine Corps—went to Iraq, went to Haiti once,” he said. “What is the pathway, I guess? Or what do you think should happen for veterans accessing psychedelics?”

Rogan told the senator “there are so many anecdotal stories about veterans experiencing relief that I think it should be available to them, especially veterans.”

Vance followed up, inquiring about whether psychedelics access would be incumbent on approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

“If it had a medical use, presumably, you would get it off of Schedule I [of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA)]. So why aren’t we—I’m just fascinated by this. This is the first time I’ve heard about this,” the senator said.

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He recognized Rogan’s point that studying psychedelics in a clinical setting is complicated by the fact that doing double-blind placebo testing with such substances is difficult given the clear indicators of being administered a hallucinogenic compound but said “you can definitely still study whether this helps people or not.”

“Why aren’t we doing that? Or are we doing that? I’m just not aware of it,” Vance said.

To that point, federal health agencies—as well as the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)—have been providing funding for research on the therapeutic potential of psychedelics. But FDA did recently reject a new drug application to allow MDMA-assisted therapy based on privately funded research.

“My attitude is, we should help veterans get the mental health treatment they need and be less screwed up by all this stuff,” Vance said. “We should be doing whatever we can. I just don’t understand. Why aren’t we like—is this a pharma lobbying thing? Because I’m always wondering, why are we not actually solving problems?”

Rogan said “you could get real cynical as to what’s the resistance,” for example by believing that “the companies that make psychotropic drugs—SSRIs and the like—and companies that have a vested interest in continuing to sell these things would not want something that causes people to have a profound psychological change that doesn’t require them to be on these things anymore. There could be an impact in that, but it’s also a lot of ignorance.”

On marijuana, Vance reiterated that, “speaking as a vice presidential candidate, we’re not trying to throw people in jail for smoking weed.”

“It’s like very much something that we’re not interested in doing,” he said. “My attitude on this is kind of ‘live and let live.’ Keep it home. I don’t like smelling it when I take my kids to the park. But keep it at home. I don’t want to throw people in prison. That’s not what we’re trying to do.”

“There’s a part of me that worries a little bit about kids doing a lot of this stuff. And I wonder about consent and the brains development and all these things I really worry about. Do you have an increase in usage among minors? And so what I’d like to get is, some sort of legal regime that, you know, again, it’s not like criminally prosecuting or prosecuting at all people for smoking a joint, but also where we can actually ensure that it’s kept out of public spaces. That’s kind of my attitude towards it. And I think that’s the right approach.”

Vance’s tone with Rogan was unique compared to how he’s discussed drug policy issues on the campaign trail in recent weeks.

That said, he acknowledged last week that fentanyl-laced marijuana is a relatively rare occurrence—despite the fact that he repeatedly sounds the alarm about the issue during his stump speeches.

During campaign speeches in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania this month, he talked about visiting a Georgia sheriff’s department and being shown “library shelves” full of “bags” of marijuana that officers have seized, as well as “more refined THC,” including some in the form of candy containing fentanyl.

He also shared the same anecdote during an event in Atlanta earlier this month, reiterating his argument that it’s an example of how the Biden-Harris administration has failed to effectively manage the U.S.-Mexico border.

A recent federally funded study found that there’s “no evidence” that marijuana is widely being laced with fentanyl. But at various previous campaign events, Vance has made much of the issue.

While Vance has expressed support for a states’ rights approach to cannabis policy and indicated he’s opposed to criminalizing people over marijuana possession, he’s more recently leaned into anti-drug rhetoric, including during an earlier campaign event with the Milwaukee Police Association in Wisconsin in August.

At the time, he claimed “marijuana bags” are being laced with fentanyl, and he said the Biden administration’s border policies were also making it so that youth, including his own kids, can’t experiment with cannabis or other drugs without risking fatal overdoses.

Vance, who was elected to the Senate in 2022, doesn’t have an extensive cannabis policy record. However, he’s voted against bipartisan banking legislation that passed in committee and has argued that states that have enacted legalization should increase enforcement activities, complained about the smell of cannabis multiple times and suggested that its use can lead to violence.

A 271-page leaked memo with vetting material on Vance included his cannabis legalization opposition under a list of “notable vulnerabilities” with moderate voters, alongside his past comments on slashing Social Security and Medicare, opposition to student loan forgiveness, support for abortion restrictions and his views on race relations, among others.

Trump, for his part, evidently doesn’t see a major liability in embracing certain cannabis reform policies, as he’s recently backed federal marijuana rescheduling and allowing industry access to banking services, as well as a Florida legalization ballot initiative he’ll get to vote as a resident this November.

Harris, meanwhile, recently made her first comments backing federal legalization since accepting the party’s 2024 nomination, weighing in on the reform in a podcast interview that was released last month. That followed weeks of protracted silence on the issue, despite her prior advocacy for legalization and sponsorship of a Senate bill to end federal prohibition.

She also said this month that part of the reason for the delay in the administration’s marijuana rescheduling effort is federal bureaucracy that “slows things down,” including at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Last month Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), Harris’s running mate, said he thinks marijuana legalization is an issue that should be left to individual states, adding that electing more Democrats to Congress could also make it easier to pass federal reforms like cannabis banking protections.

Massachusetts Should Legalize Psychedelics To Support Veterans Struggling With Mental Health Issues, Lawmakers Say (Op-Ed)