Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, Agriculture, Rural Development, Energy and Water Development, Financial Services and General Government, Interior, Environment, Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Act, 2022

Floor Speech

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Ms. OCASIO-CORTEZ. Mr. Speaker, I present this amendment at the desk today because for a very long period of time, the United States has and continues to uphold obsolete and old provisions from the war on drugs.

This provision specifically has, for a very long period of time, prevented and acted as a barricade to Federal research on certain substances--such as psilocybin, MDMA, and marijuana--in allowing us to research the applications and potential therapeutic applications of these drugs in the treatment of diseases such as PTSD, addiction, and depression.

We are long overdue and in a moment of reckoning to make sure that we not only rectify the harms from the past but allow us to research the potential medicinal applications of these substances. The first step in doing that is ending and taking down some of these old provisional barriers to research.

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Ms. OCASIO-CORTEZ. Mr. Speaker, briefly, I think one of the things that is important to acknowledge is that to have such a broad and vague provision in what qualifies as promotion, it includes research and, one could argue, primarily affects scientific research to prevent us from actually having the evidence to assess these substances for what they are.

Currently, much of the research that is being conducted right now is reliant on private funding, or the stigma and fear and the chilling effect associated with having these provisions on the books, which are largely unnecessary, prevents such critical research from being funded.

Mr. Speaker, with acknowledgment of that point, I think many of us have a shared outcome and a shared goal here, which is to help people who are hurting.

Right now, more than 40,000 people die in the United States of opioid overdoses annually. At least one in two PTSD patients cannot tolerate or do not respond adequately to existing treatment. We have promising indications that certain drugs that, frankly, are unjustly, in my opinion, placed on a schedule I list have promising outcomes for people who are suffering from PTSD, including our veterans.

We have to have the research in order to develop these holistic, whole person treatments. That research deserves to be in the realm of the public. That research deserves to be eligible for public funding. A blanket, vague ban that was borne out of fear and the paranoia of the war on drugs should not be defining the limits of our ability to act responsibly today.

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Ms. OCASIO-CORTEZ. Mr. Speaker, to that point, I believe that this problem does very much exist. Much of the research that is being conducted today must rely on private funding, and we cannot allow for that to be limited in its scope.

If we only allow corporations or if we only allow well-moneyed interests and wealthy interests to have a monopoly on the ability to research these drugs, we are not acting and really fully using the resources of the public in order to determine the full benefits that could be possible.

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