McCaul Urges Colleagues To Support NDAA Amendment Increasing Veterans' Access to Ibogaine

Amendment is led by former Navy SEAL Morgan Luttrell (R-Texas), with whom McCaul has worked extensively to champion this issue

WASHINGTON - Today, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Emeritus Michael McCaul (R-Texas) took to the House floor to urge his colleagues to pass an NDAA amendment he has championed alongside its author, Morgan Luttrell (R-Texas), to increase veterans' access to neuroplastogen treatments like ibogaine.

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Full Remarks:

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your great work on this National Defense Authorization Bill. As always, you've delivered.

Mr. Speaker, 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're providing a solution to that problem here today.

And I want to 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've talked to them - the Special Operators 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 ... [in which] MRI brain scans [demonstrated] that this medicine 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 want to thank my former Governor Rick Perry and Mr. Bryan Hubbard, [CEO of] Americans for Ibogaine, for leading this effort. I want to thank Morgan Luttrell and Marcus, his brother - ... we all know his Lone Survivor story. Ibogaine saved their lives. And we've heard the testimony from them about the effectiveness of this medicine.

It is time, Mr. Speaker, to make this medicine available to our veterans here in the United States, at our VA clinics across the nation. And this amendment - and I want to 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, they don't have to be on 30 medications, for God's sake, to treat their addiction, to treat their PTSD, when we know we have a medicine that works. The evidence is there, the data is there, the Stanford study is there, to save their lives.

So I urge my colleagues to vote for this measure. Again, I want to thank all my colleagues, including the chairman, Morgan Luttrell. I want to thank the Energy and Commerce Committee for their work to bring all this to the floor, not only today, but in the future, with future legislation.

And I want to 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. We owe it to them to pass this legislation. And with that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back.