California puts $4.7 million into veterans' psychedelic research, an idea pushed by San Diego's Brian Jones

California will spend $4.7 million on veterans' psychedelic research under AB 113, a budget trailer bill Gov. Gavin Newsom signed on September 18, 2026. The money grew out of SB 1224, a research bill championed by Sen. Brian Jones of Santee that stalled in August. It pays for research, not treatment, and doesn't make psilocybin or MDMA legal for anyone.^1,2

What the bill does

AB 113 amends the 2026 Budget Act. It was chaptered as Chapter 248, Statutes of 2026, and took effect right away.³ The Senate floor analysis lists $4.7 million from the General Fund for the California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine "to support veterans' psychedelic research."² The precision medicine initiative is an office within the California Health and Human Services Agency.⁴

VETS, a veterans' advocacy group that pushed for the funding, called it "California's first-ever state investment in veteran psychedelic-assisted therapy research."⁴ In a statement quoted by VETS, Newsom said the bill "puts real state resources behind finding new answers for veterans struggling with PTSD, TBI, and the invisible wounds of service."⁴

Where the idea came from

SB 1224, the California Emerging Therapies Research Partnership Act, would have set up a state fund run by the Department of Health Care Services and CalVet. It would have paid grants to a University of California campus that anchors federally registered clinical trials of psilocybin, ibogaine, MDMA, DMT and ketamine. The bill barred using the fund to buy or hand out controlled substances. It passed the Senate in May 2026, then was held in committee on August 13.⁵

KPBS reported that the bill's language then moved into AB 113 and credited Jones along with Sens. Josh Becker and Scott Wiener and Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal. Supporters included the Heroic Hearts Project, the American Legion, AMVETS, Healing Breakthrough, the Military Officers Association of America, Vietnam Veterans of America and VFW California.¹ The enacted budget routes the money through the precision medicine initiative rather than the fund SB 1224 described.²

It's the latest in a run of veterans' psychedelic bills from San Diego County legislators. Jones and Becker's SB 803, which would have run a psilocybin pilot in San Diego, San Francisco and Santa Cruz counties, was withdrawn in June 2024.⁶ Assemblymember Chris Ward of San Diego carried AB 1103, signed in October 2025, which speeds up state approval of federally authorized psychedelic studies.⁷ Our guide for San Diego veterans lays out the full timeline.

What it doesn't do

• It doesn't legalize or decriminalize psilocybin, MDMA or any other drug. Psilocybin is still a controlled substance in California and Schedule I federally.^8,9
• It doesn't create a treatment program veterans can sign up for.
• Neither the Senate analysis nor the news coverage we reviewed names a university or study, and we found no announced grant recipient as of October 20, 2026.

For what's actually open to veterans now, see our guides to legal psychedelic therapy options and psilocybin research in San Diego.

What to watch

The next news will be which campus and which trials get the money. Federal timing matters too: Compass Pathways is submitting its psilocybin application to the FDA on a rolling basis and expects to finish in the fourth quarter of 2026.¹⁰ California's AB 1021, signed in 2023, would let state prescribers dispense a psychedelic drug once federal rescheduling happens.¹¹