So here's what happens when the President of the United States decides psychedelic drugs need to move faster through the regulatory pipeline: the stocks of companies working on those drugs go absolutely bananas. On Monday morning, shares of Enveric BioSciences (ENVB) were up more than 92% in pre-market trading. That's not a typo—ninety-two percent.
And it wasn't just Enveric. The whole sector was lighting up. AtaiBeckley Inc (ATAI) surged 28.1%, Compass Pathways (CMPS) jumped 26.1%, and Definium Therapeutics (DFTX) climbed 14.6%. Even GH Research (GHRS) got in on the action with a 17.23% gain. All this happened because President Donald Trump issued an executive order on Saturday telling health regulators to hurry up with their reviews of psychedelic drugs.
But wait, there's more. Trump isn't just telling people to move faster—he's putting money behind it too. The administration has committed $50 million to research on ibogaine, which is a compound from an African shrub that's currently classified as a Schedule I substance in the U.S. That means the government officially considers it to have no accepted medical use, which makes funding research on it... interesting. The move is being framed as a serious step toward tackling the mental health crisis, especially for conditions like PTSD.
Unsurprisingly, the companies that stand to benefit from all this are pretty happy about it. Compass Pathways CEO Kabir Nath said the executive order "recognizes the profound urgency of the mental health crisis facing millions of Americans and the potential impact FDA-approved psychedelics could have."
And it's not just the CEOs who are excited. RBC analyst Brian Abrahams called the order "a substantial step towards diminishing regulatory risk" for psychedelic drugs. When regulators say they're going to speed things up, what they're really saying is they're going to make it less likely that your multi-year, multi-million dollar drug development program gets stuck in bureaucratic limbo. That's the kind of thing that makes investors very, very happy.
