National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2027

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCAUL. Mr. Chair, I thank our chairman for his great work on this National Defense Authorization Act. As always, he has delivered.

Mr. Chair, every day our Nation loses 17 veterans to suicide. These are men and women who survived combat but then lost to a quiet and longer war against the invisible wounds that they carried with them.

Since the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, many of them are asking: Was it worth it? Well, we are providing a solution to that problem here today.

I thank my colleague, Mr. Luttrell, for his service as a Navy SEAL and also for introducing this amendment to increase veterans' access to ibogaine. I know personally how much this means to our Nation's heroes because I have talked to them, the Special Operations Association, to people, veterans across this Nation who are clamoring for a solution to their problem, and we have one.

They should not have to travel to Mexico to receive this treatment. Countless vets have told me that they were going to give this one shot before they committed suicide. They went down. They experienced ibogaine, and they came back cured.

Stanford University did a study on 30 veterans with TBI and PTSD, verified through MRI brain scans, where it was demonstrated that ibogaine actually regenerated brain tissue and helped them get over their addiction to opioids and resolve their PTSD and TBI.

This needs to be available in the United States of America now in clinical trials to our veterans. My home State of Texas passed legislation to provide clinical trials to veterans for ibogaine.

I thank my former Governor, Rick Perry, and Mr. Bryan Hubbard, Americans for Ibogaine, for leading this effort. I thank Morgan Luttrell and Marcus, his brother, who we all know from the ``Lone Survivor'' story. Ibogaine saved their lives, and we have heard the testimony from them about the effectiveness of this medicine.

It is time, Mr. Chair, to make this medicine available to our veterans here in the United States at our VA clinics across the Nation.

This amendment--and I thank the chairman for supporting it--will take us to that point where we can now save their lives, where they don't have to worry about suicide and they don't have to be on 30 medications, for God sakes, to treat their addiction, to treat their PTSD when we know we have a medicine that works.

The evidence, the data, and the Stanford study are all there to save their lives. I urge my colleagues to vote for this measure.

Again, I thank all my colleagues, including the chairman and Morgan Luttrell for their support. I thank the Energy and Commerce Committee for their work to bring all of this to the floor, not only today but in future legislation. I also thank the heroes, those who have served this country in harm's way, those who have put their lives at risk who are suffering from these diseases today for their service. We owe it to them to pass this legislation.

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