Correction, October 25, 2026: An earlier version of this article described West Virginia’s psilocybin trigger law as proposed and said it depended on federal approval alone. The law, SB 906, was signed in March 2026 and took effect in June, and it requires both FDA approval and DEA rescheduling.
Correction, October 24, 2026: An earlier version of this article said the order names psilocybin, MDMA and ibogaine as compounds it does not authorize for clinical use, and that it sets no specific deadlines. The order states that it is not an authorization to offer emerging therapies in routine clinical practice, without naming compounds in that clause, and it sets a 45-day term for an optional preliminary report and a 120-day term for the committee’s final report, both counted from the committee’s formation. The summary and article have been revised.
Puerto Rico Governor Jenniffer González Colón signed Executive Order 2026-037 on August 4. It sets up a public policy review of whether the territory should build the scientific, regulatory, and institutional capacity to take part in clinical research on emerging therapies, a category that explicitly includes psychedelic compounds, ibogaine, psilocybin, and MDMA. The order creates a gubernatorially appointed scientific advisory committee, directs an evaluation of the feasibility of an eventual pilot research program, and names veterans specifically as a population the Health Department will help orient toward future participation.
It does not authorize administering, prescribing or offering any of these compounds in routine clinical practice, and it does not itself authorize any trial. That distinction is stated directly in the order’s own text, and it is worth keeping in view before any shorter version of this story runs ahead of it.
What the order actually creates
The order directs the Secretary of Health, Víctor Ramos Otero, to lead a comprehensive strategy for developing the scientific, regulatory, and operational capacity Puerto Rico would need to expand its role in clinical research generally, with emerging therapies named as a specific priority given the territory’s documented burden of mental health disorders, neurodegenerative disease, and substance use disorders. Signed alongside the governor were Ramos Otero, Dr. Catherine Oliver Franco, director of Puerto Rico’s Administration of Mental Health and Anti-Addiction Services, and Agustín Montañez Allman, the territory’s Advocate for Veterans, alongside representatives from the private health sector.
At the center of the order is a new Scientific and Regulatory Advisory Committee, housed within the Department of Health, with members appointed directly by the governor. Its mandated composition spans clinical research, public health, bioethics, pharmacology, neurology, psychiatry, psychology, and regulatory affairs, a broad, multidisciplinary structure rather than a narrow clinical or advocacy body. The committee’s assigned tasks include evaluating the scientific evidence currently available on emerging therapies, analyzing the scientific, ethical, clinical, regulatory, and financial feasibility of an eventual pilot program, identifying what infrastructure, training, and personnel Puerto Rico would need to build, recommending priority research areas, and producing a strategic agenda alongside a final report of recommendations. That report goes to the Health Department first, and then to the governor, who will determine what administrative or policy action, if any, follows.
The federal coordination angle
The order explicitly authorizes the Health Department to coordinate with a named list of federal agencies in pursuing this capacity-building effort: the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, the FDA, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the DEA. Naming the DEA specifically is notable, since any research involving Schedule I compounds (the federal government’s most restricted drug category, which includes psilocybin, MDMA, and ibogaine today) would ultimately require federal scheduling and registration cooperation regardless of what Puerto Rico’s own institutional readiness looks like. The order also cites the April 2026 federal executive order on psychedelic therapies directly, positioning this territorial action as a deliberate follow-on to that federal policy shift rather than an independent initiative.
The veterans provision, specifically
The order directs the Health Department to coordinate with the Office of the Veteran’s Advocate on initiatives that would help orient veterans toward, and eventually facilitate their participation in, clinical research under this framework, conditioned explicitly on scientific evidence, eligibility criteria, and applicable regulatory authorization. Governor González Colón’s own statement accompanying the order named veterans specifically as one of the populations this effort is meant to eventually serve, alongside patients, researchers, and health professionals. That framing tracks closely with the veteran-advocacy coalition that shaped the federal executive order this desk covered in April, and it is consistent with how nearly every state-level psychedelic and ibogaine policy action this year has centered veterans as the leading political and moral case for expanded research access.
A Fifth Model on the Access Map
Different jurisdictions are building psychedelic access infrastructure in distinctly different ways, and no FDA-approved product exists yet in any of them. Oregon and Colorado run a licensed-facilitator service model entirely outside FDA oversight. West Virginia has enacted a trigger law that stays dormant until FDA approval and DEA rescheduling occur first. Massachusetts has a capped, clinic-based research pilot. Canada’s Special Access Program fixed its own supply-chain problem, at the cost of narrowing who actually gets through. Puerto Rico’s order adds a fifth, distinct model to that map: a pre-pilot advisory and feasibility-study structure, with no clinical access component built in at any stage. It most resembles the early phase of Maryland’s task force process, an evidence-and-capacity review preceding any specific access framework, rather than a program with a defined access mechanism already attached.
What the order explicitly does not do
This is worth stating as precisely as the order itself does. The text states twice that it is not an authorization to administer, prescribe or offer emerging therapies as part of routine clinical practice in Puerto Rico. It defines emerging therapies as those not yet authorized for generalized clinical use, a category it says includes psychedelic therapies and ibogaine compounds, and it describes psilocybin, MDMA and ibogaine as still under investigation. No pilot program currently exists; the order directs a study of whether one should. No patient, veteran or otherwise, gains any new legal pathway to any of these compounds because of this order. The entire structure is oriented toward institutional readiness and evidence-gathering, not access.
What the Order Doesn’t Pin Down
The executive order’s full legal text is the authoritative source for its provisions, and specific details should be read against it as it is published. The order sets terms keyed to the committee’s formation rather than calendar dates: an optional preliminary report within 45 days and a final report within 120 days. The text reads “noventa (120),” an internal inconsistency between ninety and 120. The calendar dates will depend on when the committee is constituted. And nothing about this order commits Puerto Rico to actually establishing a pilot program, funding one, or acting on the committee’s eventual recommendations at all.
Why the Specifics Are the Story
An executive order that creates a committee to study the feasibility of someday studying a category of drugs is not, on its own, a dramatic development, and it should not be covered as if it were. What makes it worth attention is the specificity of what it names (ibogaine, psilocybin, and MDMA explicitly), the breadth of federal agencies it invokes by name, including the DEA, and the fact that it adds a distinct fifth model to a state and territorial access-policy landscape that has been diversifying quickly all year. Puerto Rico has not opened any door to psychedelic therapy. It has formally started deciding whether, and how, it might eventually build one, and it has named the people, veterans specifically, it says that decision is ultimately meant to serve.