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Matt Zorn, a prominent cannabis and psychedelics-focused attorney who made a name for himself in suing the government, has now joined its ranks. In accepting a role as Deputy General Counsel in the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Immediate Office of the General Counsel (OGC), Zorn appears to have quietly assumed the unprecedented position of ‘psychedelics czar’ in the second Trump administration.
Zorn has been a key adversary to governments of both stripes on drug-related issues, challenging them on matters like allowing research on cannabis for veterans with PTSD, preventing tryptamines from being scheduled, and fighting for patient access to psilocybin under Right to Try laws.
Now, he’s going inside the tent, with what looks to be a mandate over psychedelics-related matters.
Here, we recount Zorn’s path from ‘thorn in the side’ of the federal government to insider, what we might expect from him in his new role, and how insiders are reacting to the news.
Thorn in the Side to Government Insider
Zorn is no stranger to confronting the U.S. government and its federal agencies on matters broadly relating to drugs.
He has worked with researchers like Sue Sisley and his colleague Shane Pennington to sue the DEA over its effective rejection of her marijuana for PTSD in veterans study, with Psychedelic Alpha Editor-at-Large Graham Pechenik to lead a successful challenge against DEA’s plan to schedule five tryptamines, and held that same agency to task over other matters like access to psilocybin via Right to Try statute and its flouting of FOIA requests.
That FOIA-related saga led to the release of a letter from former Assistant Secretary of the HHS Rachel Levine to former DEA head Anne Milgram that recommended placing marijuana in Schedule III. The letter had first been mentioned in an August 2023 Bloomberg article and, in a sign of just how closely Zorn has followed these rescheduling-related matters, he filed that FOI request the very same day the Bloomberg article was published.
What’s more, in a sign of his persistence, he sued HHS in November 2023 after it failed to produce the requested letter.
Despite being deeply involved in psychedelics and cannabis legal issues, Zorn rejects the label of “psychedelic lawyer.” Being an effective lawyer is more important than identifying with any particular brand of lawyer, he has said.
And, whatever one thinks of Zorn, it is hard to argue that he has not been effective, including in securing an influential position in government.
A Psychedelics Czar
Zorn now serves as one of a half-dozen or so Deputy General Counsels at HHS’s OGC. While the office is technically tasked with providing legal advice across the agency, it has historically been instrumental in defining, defending, and implementing federal health policy, including, for example, the rollout of the Affordable Care Act.
There are presently six Deputy General Counsel, according to the OGC’s website. Zorn is not yet represented there, but is reflected in an HHS staff directory.
Some of Zorn’s fellow counsel have clear areas of expertise and interest. Rujul Desai, for example, was appointed to his role last month and has a focus on matters relating to drug pricing and reimbursement. Eric Osterhues, meanwhile, played a prominent role in the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic’s investigation of the origins of the virus, before being appointed to his Deputy General Counsel role at the OGC in March.
While the role of the OGC’s staff might seem quite vanilla, in that it is generally tasked with providing legal advice to HHS, they can wield meaningful influence over the broad portfolio of agencies and institutes under the Department. In the past, Deputy General Counsels have played important roles in flagship HHS programs, such as the Affordable Care Act, for example.
What’s more, its power has been centralised under the Trump administration. In March, the Department announced a reorganisation of the OGC, consolidating many of its regional offices (from ten to four) and creating a new position, the Chief Counsel for Food, Research and Drugs (which is presently occupied by Robert Foster after Hilary Perkins resigned after just two days on the job).
That consolidation echoes similar moves in the first Trump administration, according to Sidley Austin LLP, which “could potentially signal an effort to consolidate and expand HHS-OGC’s authority”.
What’s more, the Trump administration has made it clear that it is not particularly interested in the conventional remit of lawyers, so there is no reason to believe Zorn’s role will be limited to poring over minutiae.
Moreover, Zorn’s role—which had been rumoured for months—has been described by those close to the matter as a ‘psychedelics czar’, suggesting that his role will focus substantially on the matter.
“Bullish on Chaos”: Zorn’s Vision
Zorn has largely kept shtum, at least publicly, this year. But in a December 2024 interview with Psychedelic Alpha Editor Josh Hardman he offered a rare, unfiltered look at his thinking (and, perhaps, his unofficial CV for the role he now holds). (See Bullish on Chaos: Matt Zorn on How Psychedelics Could Benefit from Trump’s Second Term.)
In that discussion, Zorn expressed his excitement around a potential opening that the incoming Trump administration presented, in his opinion.
He expressed deep and characteristic frustrations with how the U.S. system of drug and medical regulation operates, and said he was excited that “someone like RFK Jr.” might be willing to ask ‘deeper questions’ about that system. “I do think that having someone who’s a bit of a chaos agent”, he said, “who is willing to actually peel back the layers and start asking these deeper, more fundamental questions can only be a good thing.”
Rethinking Risk and Reward in Drug Development
When it comes to drug development and market authorisation pathways for new drugs, Zorn enjoys floating those big questions, like ‘Are we using the right standards of safety and efficacy?’
“I think there’s a really good case that we shouldn’t be testing for efficacy, or that can be done post approval, or that there are ways to have medicines on the market in an off-label or no-label way while still testing for efficacy”, he said, in an opinion that is shared by other people in Trump’s orbit, like Deputy HHS Secretary Jim O’Neill.
He also suggested that the level of evidence, or the standard to which it is assessed, should be commensurate with the urgency of society’s need for new medicines in a given disease area.
“I think you can make a pretty good argument that requiring safety and efficacy for approval needs to include a third element or simply a balancing test that is more of a risk-benefit type approach”, he told us.
“The benefit in an emergency is tremendous”, he continued, drawing parallels to vaccine development, where urgency is important and so “the level of evidence we would require maybe on safety should be high, but on efficacy, probably not so much.”
He also argued that the reason we don’t have FDA-approved psychedelics, like MDMA, “is mostly an economic problem”, with the cost of demonstrating efficacy creating issues. “[A]t the end of the day,” he added, “if it were more economical to bring these treatments to market, they would have been brought to market ten, twenty, thirty years ago.”
Zorn’s conviction that the FDA need not be the arbiter on efficacy is driven by his belief that, given access to online resources like PubMed, “the need to have a centralised government body review all the evidence…is severely diminished.” (Zorn even suggested that “AI would probably do as good of a job as FDA of reviewing these data”.)
Companies would still be incentivised to produce that data, Zorn believes, due to payors expecting it in order to inform coverage decisions. Still, he says this should be a lot cheaper once a medicine is on the market, adding that real-world evidence “would be more useful in the case of mental health treatments in particular.”
Despite being popular among those close to the agency, the effort to shift pre-approval efficacy studies to post-marketing monitoring and real-world evidence raises a whole host of questions, which are not delved into here.
Just one of those is the fact that, without payors on board, the types of patients who might access newly-marketed drugs prior to reimbursement are not representative of the broader patient pool. In the case of psychedelics, for example, those early recipients would likely skew toward those of higher socioeconomic status who can pay out of pocket, or very specific subpopulations, such as veterans in the case of PTSD (assuming the VA were willing to pilot psychedelic care delivery).
Don’t Hold Your Breath for Broad Rescheduling
Aside from the drug development and approval front, we also spoke to Zorn last December about the potential for rescheduling or even legalising psychedelics under the second Trump administration.
“A lot of folks are talking about, with RFK Jr., legalised psychedelics and cannabis,” Zorn told us, “but he happens to be in the wrong agency for that one… that would be more on the attorney general side of things.”
He wouldn’t place any bets on the likelihood of that happening, at least in our December conversation. “I think there’s every indication that Trump’s not going to tolerate people deviating from his position,” he said, “so it depends on what stance he takes.”
Zorn also told us that advocates of psychedelic rescheduling should be following marijuana rescheduling “extremely closely”.
But might that experience suggest that Trump’s stance is one of political convenience: publicly supporting marijuana rescheduling in the pre-election period when it appeared to be a vote winner, but demonstrating an apparent waning of political will since taking office?
Whether Zorn’s appointment represents a reinvigoration of that marijuana rescheduling push is unclear.
It is perhaps a surer bet, given his ‘psychedelics czar’ nickname, that Zorn will work to tackle blockers to psychedelics research and market access, at least in the medical model. Whether that will take the form of psychedelics-specific carve-outs and regulatory tweaks, or whether the class of investigational medicines might instead be beneficiaries of broader reforms like lowering pre-marketing efficacy requirements, such as the need for double-blind trials, also remains unclear.
Destigmatising Psychedelics
While Zorn avoids the trappings of a conventional psychedelics evangelist, he has expressed interest in shifting public perception around the class of drugs. In his December interview, for example, he offered advice to those trying to destigmatise psychedelics.
“One thing I’ve been talking about is,” he told us, “rather than trying to bring people to psychedelics or bring psychedelics to them, I think a lot of it is about illustrating that psychedelics have already contributed to our culture.” He mentioned the rumoured (though perhaps unlikely) role of LSD in Watson and Crick’s theorisation of the double helix structure of DNA, but also added that there is “a less dramatic case for psychedelics, too.”
“What about ‘psychedelics help me with bowling?’, he said.
“An Unsung Hero”, But Not Without Critics
Those in the cannabis advocacy and investor communities appear torn over government-insider-Zorn. Some are excited, given his efforts to keep momentum behind efforts to reschedule marijuana. Others worry that his apparent psychedelics mandate might signal a shift in focus.
The psychedelics field, meanwhile, appears more bullish.
A half-dozen people that Psychedelic Alpha has spoken with are almost universally excited by Zorn’s appointment, which had become a poorly-kept secret in recent months. Over the past six months, a small group of insiders have worked to get Zorn the role.
In speaking with Psychedelic Alpha, psychedelics researcher and practitioner Joseph Barsuglia described Zorn as “an unsung hero in the cannabis and psychedelics world for suing multiple federal agencies to address obstructions in cannabis and psychedelics research.”
He hopes that Zorn’s new role will allow him to influence research via the NIH, NIMH, NIDA, and ARPA-H; regulation and approvals via the FDA; and, clinical implementation, services, and education through the newly formed Administration for a Healthy America (AHA).
Barsuglia told us that, “as legal counsel focused on this domain, Zorn could help create greater coherence, collaboration and transparency at the HHS level and between divisions, and across the developmental arc of research, regulatory/approvals, and clinical implementation.”
“Love it”, Simeon Schnapper, partner of JLS Fund, said to us in response to the news. He commended Zorn’s “shift from adversary to architect”, describing it as “a moment where the goals of advocacy, investment, and public benefit align.”
“I think it’s a great hire”, MAPS founder Rick Doblin told us.
While the general tone is optimistic, some expressed concerns or reservations. Common qualms concerned Zorn’s apparent interest in reducing pre-marketing efficacy requirements and the potential negative externalities this might bring, while others expressed broader worries about the administration lowering its standards (or appearing to do so) when it comes to psychedelic drug development and approvals.
Pα: Many psychedelics advocates are now watching closely, hopeful that Zorn—who spoke enthusiastically about capitalising on chaos in his December 2024 interview with Psychedelic Alpha—is well-positioned to do just that.
On paper, the role may seem bureaucratic. But the recent consolidation of the OGC, the Trump administration’s apparent disregard for institutional orthodoxy, and key players like HHS Secretary RFK Jr. expressing clear interest in psychedelics all suggest that Zorn may have both the latitude and leverage to pursue meaningful reforms across HHS’ broad portfolio. He could also be joined by other psychedelics-friendly appointments in HHS portfolio agencies and institutes.
But Zorn is also known for his sharp tongue. If he finds himself blocked from pushing the reforms he’s publicly advocated for, including in these pages, it wouldn’t be surprising to see him walk, taking to his acerbic On Drugs Substack to let the world know why.
Regardless, his appointment is likely more than simply symbolic. For those debating whether federal psychedelics policy is finally entering a phase of real reform or just rhetorical reshuffling, Zorn’s presence inside the system marks a hefty vote in the column of substance over spin. ∎
