{"id":4776,"date":"2025-11-05T17:17:48","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T06:17:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/the-psychedelic-syndicate-how-silicon-valley-used-veterans-to-hijack-the-psychedelic-industry\/"},"modified":"2025-12-06T12:02:59","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T01:02:59","slug":"the-psychedelic-syndicate-how-silicon-valley-used-veterans-to-hijack-the-psychedelic-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/the-psychedelic-syndicate-how-silicon-valley-used-veterans-to-hijack-the-psychedelic-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"The Psychedelic Syndicate:  How Silicon Valley Used Veterans to Hijack the Psychedelic Industry"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t<div data-elementor-type=\"wp-post\" data-elementor-id=\"4776\" class=\"elementor elementor-4776\" data-elementor-post-type=\"post\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-5b7dfbe3 e-flex e-con-boxed e-con e-parent\" data-id=\"5b7dfbe3\" data-element_type=\"container\" data-e-type=\"container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"e-con-inner\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-7d0ef682 elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"7d0ef682\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-e-type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div><\/div>\n<strong>The Psychedelic Syndicate:\u00a0<\/strong><em>How Silicon Valley Used Veterans to Hijack the Psychedelic Industry<\/em>\n\n<em>Excerpt from Executive Summary<\/em>\n\nThis report provides an in-depth examination of how a strategic, well-funded campaign operated to influence public perception at the expense of public health.\n\nPsymposia has spent over a year investigating the financial and political forces shaping the psychedelic industry. Through analysis of hundreds of internal documents \u2014 including unedited emails, transcripts, presentations, and other primary materials spanning nearly a decade \u2014 this report describes the rise of the Psychedelic Science Funders Collaborative (PSFC) and its extensive influence across the field.\n\nThe prevailing media narrative has characterized the psychedelic movement as an organic coalition of grassroots activists motivated by psychedelics\u2019 therapeutic potential. Our analysis reveals PSFC&#8217;s coordinated efforts to circumvent federal regulatory structures and manipulate state-level policy development, transforming a community-led movement into a vehicle for centralized corporate influence.\n\nFollowing the FDA\u2019s 2024 rejection of MDMA-assisted therapy, PSFC-funded organizations targeted critics and whistleblowers in collaboration with the Psychedelic Communications Hub (now incorporated into the Psychedelic Safety Institute). Organizations involved in this campaign included the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), Lykos Therapeutics, and veterans groups Heroic Hearts Project and Healing Breakthrough.\n\nHaving failed to subvert the FDA regulatory process, these groups are now appealing to the Trump administration to accelerate approval based on data from clinical trials characterized by serious scientific failures. Disregarding public safety concerns in their rush to bring an experimental therapy to market, PSFC responded to the FDA&#8217;s rejection by intensifying strategies that would amount to regulatory capture.\n<p><p>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Psychedelic-Syndicate-PDF-10-23-2025.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">View PDF<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Psychedelic Syndicate:\u00a0How Silicon Valley Used Veterans to Hijack the Psychedelic Industry Excerpt from Executive Summary This report provides an in-depth examination of how a strategic, well-funded campaign operated to influence public perception at the expense of public health. Psymposia has spent over a year investigating the financial and political forces shaping the psychedelic industry. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dalgarno-institute-aod-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4776"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10344,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4776\/revisions\/10344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}