Support for Regulated Psychedelic Therapy Climbs Sharply, Poll Finds

A new national survey tracking U.S. voter attitudes toward psychedelics finds a substantial shift in how the public views regulated therapeutic access and expanded research—though the same data makes clear that safety concerns remain a meaningful check on broader acceptance.

The UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics released its second national survey in May 2026, comparing attitudes measured in spring 2025 against a 2023 baseline. The survey interviewed 1,577 U.S. registered voters between April 16 and April 28, 2025, with a margin of error of ±2.5 percentage points. The center describes the pattern it found as a “striking increase” in public support for approaches that keep psychedelics within regulated, supervised clinical frameworks.

By 2025, 81 percent of voters said they “somewhat or strongly” support making it easier for scientists to study psychedelics, 72 percent backed legal therapeutic access, and 66 percent supported a federal prescription-medicine pathway. Support for decriminalization—removing criminal penalties for personal possession—came in at 51 percent, and showed no meaningful gain since 2023.

The gains were sharpest among voters expressing firm rather than tentative support. The survey report documents significant increases in the proportion of voters who strongly—not just somewhat—backed therapeutic access, the prescription pathway, and research expansion. Decriminalization was the exception: the share of voters who strongly supported that approach remained essentially flat.

The survey authors drew a clear line between what those numbers mean and what they don’t: “Regulated use with clear guardrails related to safety is gaining traction, while support for unregulated access is not.”

Where support concentrates

Voters are not expressing a general openness to psychedelics—they’re expressing targeted support for specific populations in supervised settings. Majorities back regulated therapeutic access for people with depression (61 percent), military veterans (56 percent), and people dealing with addiction (55 percent). Research into psilocybin-assisted therapy for substance use disorders is one area where clinical work is accelerating alongside public sentiment. For end-of-life care, a combined 86 percent of respondents said some form of access—whether regulated therapy or decriminalization—was appropriate.

Support among self-identified conservatives increased notably compared to 2023, and proximity to psychedelic use—meaning the respondent or someone close to them had used a psychedelic—grew across demographic groups, including respondents aged 65 and older (34 to 46 percent) and Black voters (26 to 42 percent).

The pattern describes a public that has registered clinical findings around depression and PTSD and wants those findings rigorously tested and, where they hold up, made available in medical settings. That’s a bounded ask—more limited than broad legalization—and the distance between the two is visible in the persistent gap between support for regulated therapy and support for decriminalization.

Safety concerns that remain

Below the support figures, ambivalence is still significant. Between 35 and 38 percent of respondents described psychedelics as “addictive” or said the substances “can cause new mental health challenges.” Only 34 percent rated psychedelic use in a supervised setting as “pretty” or “extremely” safe, according to the survey’s published findings. About one in four respondents described people who use psychedelics as “irresponsible.”

Public support for access and public confidence in safety are not the same thing. A voter can favor making psilocybin available to a veteran with treatment-resistant PTSD—under a clinician’s supervision, within a developed protocol—while still holding real concerns about the substance’s safety profile. The BCSP data shows that combination is common.

That ambivalence tracks a genuine uncertainty in the clinical literature. Questions around screening, contraindications for patients with histories of psychosis or certain mood disorders, and the potential for adverse psychological experiences during sessions are active research areas—not resolved ones.

Clinical evidence and public opinion on different timelines

A voter survey measures attitudes, not outcomes. Growing public support for psychedelic therapy does not mean the clinical case is settled, and providers fielding patient questions should hold that distinction clearly.

Several phase 3 clinical trials for psilocybin-assisted therapy are currently underway in the U.S., targeting major depressive disorder and treatment-resistant depression. Trials run by the Usona Institute, COMPASS Pathways (CMPS ), and researchers at the University of North Carolina represent the most rigorous tests of psilocybin’s therapeutic potential to date, with results expected over the next year and a half.

The MDMA path has been slower. The FDA rejected Lykos Therapeutics’ application for MDMA-assisted PTSD therapy in August 2024, citing study design flaws and requesting an additional phase 3 trial before approval could move forward—a reminder that early-phase promise does not automatically translate to a green light. The agency affirmed it wanted to see continued psychedelic drug development.

On the policy side, a presidential executive order on psychedelic medicine directed agencies to examine access pathways, and the FDA and HHS have since announced steps toward accelerating therapeutic access for patients with serious mental health conditions. A bipartisan group of 32 members of Congress pressed federal health officials to move faster on psychedelic therapy reviews; Senate committee hearings on veteran-focused psychedelic research legislation have followed.

A 2026 RAND Corporation report found that nearly 10 million American adults microdosed psychedelic substances in 2025—a figure that suggests real-world use is already running ahead of both regulatory frameworks and the clinical evidence base.

What the Berkeley poll ultimately reflects is a public that has largely arrived at the position researchers have been advocating for years: cautious, supervised, evidence-based access is worth pursuing seriously. The clinical data that will determine whether that caution is well-placed—and what safe protocols actually look like at scale—is what the ongoing phase 3 trials will deliver.