Incoming attorney general replaces leading advocate of funding research aimed at legalizing psychedelic for addiction treatment
![Incoming attorney general replaces leading advocate of funding research aimed at legalizing psychedelic for addiction treatment](https://lexingtonky.news/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/D._Christopher_Evans_US_Gov_photo_2021-jpg.webp)
By Al Cross
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D. Christopher Evans |
The commission’s new chair and executive director will be Christoper Evans, a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent and leader who was acting administrator of the agency for more than five months in 2021, while President Biden’s nominee, Anne Milgram, was being chosen and confirmed.
At the commission’s Nov. 14 meeting, Hubbard read several endorsements of ibogaine by experts, foundations and the American Legion. One foundation is supporting ibogaine research at Stanford University, which is awaiting publication, presumably in a peer-reviewed journal. Hubbard said the researcher had agreed to discuss his findings with the commission after they are published.
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Bryan Hubbard |
Hubbard noted that on Oct. 31 the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Health and Human Services issued a notice of funding opportunity for research on psychedelics including ibogaine as treatment for substance-use disorder. The notice says “There is an urgent need to develop novel treatments for SUD in light of the escalating rates of substance use, addiction, and overdose.”
Bentley cautioned the commission to be aware of who is funding ibogaine research. Citing his education as a pharmacist and one of the earlier witnesses at the commission, he said he was taught that “If the people paying for the research own the company and the drug, it was invalid from the get-go.”
Gov. Andy Beshear was also critical of the idea and the way it was promoted by Hubbard. His initial promotion of it was countenanced by Cameron, whom Beshear defeated for re-election.
Around the time Cameron implicitly endorsed the idea, a firm owned by a major national political contributor increased its investment in such research and gave Cameron a political boost, the Daily Beast reported.
Unlike Hubbard, Evans will have a deputy: Jessie Halladay, now a senior policy specialist with the Criminal Justice Institute. She has been special adviser to the Louisville Metro Police Department, senior policy adviser to the Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet, communications director for Jefferson County attorney and a public-safety and social-services reporter for the Louisville Courier Journal.
Evans, who will head the commission starting next month, was the first special agent in charge of the DEA’s Louisville Field Division. In that job, he partnered with Coleman, then U.S. attorney for Western Kentucky, to create a DEA office in Paducah, a Coleman news release said.
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http://kyhealthnews.blogspot.com/2023/12/new-attorney-general-replaces-leading.html