Texas Committee Approves Amended Bills To Speed Access To Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy Upon Federal Approval

A Texas House committee has amended and advanced a pair of bills designed to ensure speedy access to psychedelic-assisted therapy in the event of federal approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

One measure, HB 4014, would establish a state-backed study into the substances and their use to treat conditions such as PTSD and depression. The other, HB 4813, would dictate that substances reclassified under federal law be similarly controlled under state law.

Sponsors have said the bills are intended to work together to minimize delays to military veterans and others who stand to benefit from the potentially life-saving therapy.

The House Committee on Public Health amended both measures prior to reporting them favorably on Thursday of last week.

Among changes to the study bill, from Rep. John Bucy III (D), the revised measure would house the program under the Health and Human Services Commission rather than within the Department of State Health Services, as the bill’s language initially proposed.

The amended three-page measure also removes earlier text that said the state would work in consultation with researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Psychedelic Research and Therapy. And it clarifies that to fund the program, the state “may solicit and accept federal funds” as well as “gifts, grants, or donations from any source.”

The project would include an assessment of clinical trials and published literature into the efficacy of psychedelics—specifically MDMA, psilocybin and ketamine—as a treatment PTSD, depression and other mental health disorders.

Officials would also review FDA actions around the therapies, evaluate treatment guidelines and make recommendations to eventually ensure legal access for Texas patients.

By December 1, 2026, the commission would need to provide a report to state lawmakers with results of the study as well as “any recommendations for legislative or other action necessary to ensure patient access to psychedelic therapies for treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and other co-occurring conditions after those therapies are approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration.”

“This is going to happen. This is coming,” Bucy said in testimony at an earlier hearing last week. “This is the study bill to make sure we’re ready when it comes to implement.”

The bill would take effect September 1 of this year and expire September 1, 2027.

The other measure favorably reported by the committee at Thursday’s hearing—HB 4813, from Rep. Tom Oliverson (R)—also aims to minimize delay at the state level if and when FDA approves a new drug—such as psilocybin or MDMA—for treatment.

That proposal was also amended by the committee, according to the legislature’s website, although text of the amendment has not been posted. Oliverson, the bill’s sponsor, did not immediately respond to an emailed request from Marijuana Moment for the revised language.

As introduced, the bill said that if and when the federal government reclassifies a substance, Texas officials would need to quickly reschedule that drug to align with the change.

“All we’re seeking to do is to amend statute to accelerate that process for these very promising compounds that have been shown to be very effective in these conditions.” Oliverson told committee members at an earlier hearing on the bill.

He noted that psilocybin and MDMA are both in Phase 3 clinical trials “and are likely to be approved by the FDA, you know, any day now.”

An anesthesiologist, Oliverson said at the time that the goal is to “avoid an unnecessary, lengthy delay” to access to psychedelic therapies in Texas in the event the federal government approves them.

“As a doctor, I’m just telling you my own personal feeling is I want people to have access to drugs that work,” he said, “and I want them to have access to it as soon as possible.”

Also testifying in support of the measure at the earlier hearing was Lynnette Averill, a Baylor College of Medicine professor and director of research at the school’s Menninger Clinic.

Averill said the proposal would build on a measure passed in Texas in 2021 to study psychedelics as a possible treatment for veterans with PTSD, which she said helped make the state “a pioneer in this space.”

“What a bill like this would do,” she said, “is really continue build on the landmark move that Texas made in the 2021 legislative session.”

“We know that there are often significant regulatory delays [and] bureaucratic delays, and ultimately what that translates to, in this case, is loss of life,” Averill told the panel. “We know that that is the reality. We are in a mental health crisis unlike anything we have dealt with previously, and we have to acknowledge that and treat these interventions as the life saving potential that they are, and to do everything in our power to be ready to provide these at a scalable level as soon as we are able.”

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Meanwhile in the state legislature, a House committee took up a bill last week that would prohibit cities from putting citizen initiatives on local ballots to decriminalize marijuana or other controlled substances.

Just two days after a Senate version of the measure cleared that full chamber, the House State Affairs Committee held a hearing on the companion version from Rep. Jeff Leach (R), with proposed amendments to align both bills.

In the last few years, members, several local governments across the state of Texas have adopted policies and ordinances that are designed to decriminalize controlled substances or instruct law enforcement or prosecutors not to enforce our state’s drug laws,” Leach said, noting that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) has filed lawsuits against multiple municipalities where the local reform was enacted.

It’s not clear why, if the attorney general’s lawsuits assert that local decriminalization laws are already prohibited under statute, the proposed amendments to the code are necessary. But the legislation does appear to escalate enforcement and penalties.

While several courts have previously upheld local cannabis decriminalization laws, an appellate court comprised of three conservative justices appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has recently pushed back against two of those rulings, siding with the state in its legal challenge to the marijuana policy in Austin and San Marcos.

Meanwhile, despite the ongoing litigation and advancement of the House and Senate bills, Texas activists have their targets set on yet another city, Kyle, where they hope put an initiative before voters to enact local marijuana reform at the ballot this coming November.

Abbott has lashed out against the municipal cannabis reform efforts.

“Local communities such as towns, cities and counties, they don’t have the authority to override state law,” the governor said last May “If they want to see a different law passed, they need to work with their legislators. Let’s legislate to work to make sure that the state, as a state, will pass some of the law.”

He said it would lead to “chaos” and create an “unworkable system” for voters in individual cities to be “picking and choosing” the laws they want abide by under state statute.

Abbott has previously said that he doesn’t believe people should be in jail over marijuana possession—although he mistakenly suggested at the time that Texas had already enacted a decriminalization policy to that end.

In 2023, Ground Game released a report that looked at the impacts of the marijuana reform laws. It found that the measures will keep hundreds of people out of jail, even as they have led to blowback from law enforcement in some cities. The initiatives have also driven voter turnout by being on the ballot, the report said.

Another cannabis decriminalization measure that went before voters in San Antonio that year was overwhelmingly defeated, but that proposal also included unrelated provisions to prevent enforcement of abortion restrictions.

Meanwhile, late last month the Texas Senate approved a bill that cannabis advocates and stakeholders said would effectively eradicate the state’s hemp industry, prohibiting consumable products derived from the plant that contain any amount of THC.

That, as well as another measure from Rep. Joe Moody (D) to decriminalize cannabis statewide, is one of the latest of nearly two dozen cannabis-related proposals filed so far in Texas for the current legislative session. Various other measures would legalize adult-use marijuana, remove criminal penalties for cannabis possession and adjust the state’s existing medical marijuana laws, among others.

Moody sponsored a similar marijuana decriminalization bill last legislative session, in 2023. That measure, HB 218, passed the House on an 87–59 vote but later died in a Senate committee.

The House had already passed earlier cannabis decriminalization proposals during the two previous legislative sessions, in 2021 and 2019. But the efforts have consistently stalled in the Senate amid opposition from the lieutenant governor.

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Photo courtesy of Wikimedia/Workman.

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