On the local and national levels, it seems entirely possible the “psychedelic renaissance” is going to have a productive year in 2025.  

With President-elect Donald Trump nominating Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), advocates of psychedelic decriminalization have reason to be cautiously optimistic. Earlier this year, for example, Kennedy admonished the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for rejecting an application to approve an MDMA-assisted therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder.

If he becomes secretary for HHS, Kennedy would be in a position to alter the generally prohibitionist attitudes within such agencies and clear the way for reformists to start making serious progress. 

Of course, even if RFK Jr. is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, structural reform on the national level isn’t exactly a foregone conclusion. The federal government’s obstinance to deregulating, rescheduling and legitimizing marijuana, for example, continues to be a grueling struggle despite the Biden administration’s pledge to do so. 

Even when the people in charge want reform, change is apparently never swift nor simple in our Leviathan regulatory system. 

As we’ve seen with marijuana decriminalization, however, states don’t necessarily have to wait for the lumbering bureaucratic machinery in Washington, D.C., to catch up. Nevada could begin the process of structuring a regulatory framework for decriminalization — in a medicinal capacity or otherwise — long before attitudes shift within the FDA. 

In fact, we’re already on our way. Last year, Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo signed a bill to create a “working group” to study certain psychedelic compounds and plot a path forward for further research and possible therapeutic use. 

SB242 was originally a far more ambitious reform effort that would have decriminalized small quantities of psilocybin — the psychoactive ingredient in “magic mushrooms” — and allowed for research and clinical trials to take place within Nevada. However, politics being politics, the proposal was watered down to a mere study of how such reforms could be implemented or structured. 

The report from this group is due before the end of this year, giving next year’s Legislature an “actionable plan on how to enable access to therapeutic entheogens and compounds … that are safe, accessible, and affordable.” That report could effectively serve as a roadmap for reform-minded lawmakers in the 2025 legislative session — assuming legislative leadership will actually entertain any proposals that draw inspiration from the group’s findings. 

Overall, that’s a fairly friendly political outlook for a psychedelic movement that, until recently, had seemingly struggled to gain legitimacy among lawmakers, regulators and the general public. 

After all, it wasn’t that long ago that it would have been considered outlandish for a Republican governor — who is a former sheriff — to greenlight a “working group” on magic mushrooms. Similarly, few people would have predicted that Trump’s return to the White House would include an HHS run by an often-conspiratorial RFK Jr. interested in dismantling the agency’s prohibitionist policy approach. 

And yet, here we are. 

Part of the reason the movement now finds itself with plenty of reason for measured optimism comes down to the simple fact that there’s a growing body of evidence such substances have legitimate uses for mental health treatment — and that’s changing attitudes within the medical community as well as politics.  

American psychiatrists, for example, have been growing increasingly supportive of further researching hallucinogens, and even traditionally conservative medical schools have turned their attention toward such areas of study. John Hopkins Medicine, for example, has an entire center dedicated to looking at the way psilocybin can be used to help treat everything from addiction to severe depression — and the anecdotal evidence that such therapy has helped individuals incapable of finding relief elsewhere has been promising. 

Indeed, even law enforcement officials are no longer reflexively opposed to narrow uses of such substances in clinical settings. Testifying in Nevada’s working group, law enforcement professionals made it clear that while they remain opposed to recreational use, potential clinical applications and research of such psychedelics would be a different matter. 

That distinction indicates there will be plenty of room for some form of decriminalization to make its way through next year’s Legislature with relatively little organized opposition — regardless of what happens on the national level.  

In other words, with shifting political attitudes, a possible Kennedy-run HHS and Nevada’s apparent openness to reform, there are plenty of reasons to think 2025 could end up being a pretty trippy year for the psychedelic movement. 

Michael Schaus is a communications and branding expert based in Las Vegas, Nevada, and founder of Schaus Creative LLC — an agency dedicated to helping organizations, businesses and activists tell their story and motivate change. He has more than a decade of experience in public affairs commentary, having worked as a news director, columnist, political humorist, and most recently as the director of communications for a public policy think tank. Follow him at SchausCreative.com or on Twitter at @schausmichael.