Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2024

Floor Speech

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Mr. LUTTRELL. Mr. Chair, I rise today to offer an amendment to H.R. 4365, which would provide $15 million in funding for a plant-based or psychedelic clinical trial authorized in the House version of the fiscal year 2024 NDAA.

Mr. Chairman, I can personally attest to the benefits in treating post-traumatic stress, traumatic brain injury, and chronic traumatic encephalopathy through the use of psychedelic substances. There is a stigma that exists within this body that I believe stems from a lack of education and experience around the clinical use of plant-based or psychedelic medications.

I understand that when many of my colleagues hear the word psychedelics they think of mushrooms and so on. This isn't what we are talking about today. Unfortunately, the stigma has led to the slow or no adoption of medical procedures that may have saved countless lives of our servicemembers, veterans, and first responders.

Mr. Chairman, it is our duty to explore all options when the lives of our Nation's most precious resources, our sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters are at stake.

Mr. Chair, I urge the adoption of my amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. LUTTRELL. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman and I appreciate that as a veteran.

I hold degrees in psychology and applied cognizant neuroscience. I have spent the better part of a decade studying our servicemembers, Active-Duty members, veterans, and first responders in the space of cognitive disability and decline.

We lose 22-plus a day in the veterans' space. We lose members in the active-service space as well, daily. I have traveled the country studying the aggressive nature of treatments in spaces like our cognitive decline, like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, and other modalities.

The numbers that we are seeing are not decreasing, they are increasing. As we transition out of these wars that we fought for so many years, we have to do something more aggressive.

I say clinical studies and clinical trials inside the DOD because it is applicable and it is appropriate. We have some of the most brilliant researchers on the planet that can study this and move this effectively so we can treat the men and women that serve our country.

These medications have short-term--no long-term residual side effects--short-term, if anything. The effects are groundbreaking. We are at a preface. I hate the fact that the word psychedelic scares everybody. I hate that word myself. When I try to think of a creative term to title this, it always cycles back to the word psychedelics, and that is unfortunate, it is. We have to look past that.

I have never done a drug in my entire life. As a matter of fact, I would tell no one to do this because the aggressiveness of it is so life-changing, but it is effective. That is why I continue to push forward, and I think it is time and its effectiveness needs to be implemented now.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

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