Trump Administration Vetoed Compass Priority Voucher

The Trump administration nixed Compass Pathways’ inclusion on a list of ten candidates slated to receive a Commissioner’s National Priority Voucher (CNPV) last October, STAT reported earlier this week. As a reminder, CNPVs are intended to reduce the drug review timeline to just one or two months, the agency has said.

According to STAT, the decision to block the voucher was made “just hours” prior to the agency’s announcement of the first batch of recipients. The move appears to be further evidence that MAGA and MAHA, a sort of ven diagram of part of President Trump’s base, remain unaligned on some fronts.

We touched on this friction in a Dispatch from D.C. late last year (The View from D.C.: Psychedelic Politics, Blockers and Approvals on the Horizon), where we noted that many in the field were concerned that key advisors and friends of the President must be swayed in order to pass any substantial psychedelics-related measures, “or else the White House itself could remain a blocker.” By that point, the fact that the voucher had been pulled was something of an open secret in certain corners of the psychedelics field, though it only became public knowledge via STAT’s reporting this week.

Reactions have been varied, though many in the psychedelics advocacy world have expressed dismay. Just last week, some had been complaining about a lack of concrete action from the administration regarding psychedelics access in outlets like Politico. But now, worse than inaction, some view the CNPV saga as a sign of active, negative interference from the top of the administration...