Kennedy’s Plan for the Drug Disaster: A Community of ‘Therapeutic Farms’

Although Mr. Kennedy’s embrace of restoration farms could also be novel, the idea stretches again virtually a century. In 1935, the federal government opened the United States Narcotic Farm in Lexington, Ky., to analysis and deal with habit. Through the years, residents included Chet Baker and William S. Burroughs (who portrayed the establishment in his novel, “Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict”). This system had excessive relapse charges and was tainted by drug experiments on human topics. By 1975, as native remedy facilities started to proliferate across the nation, this system closed.

In America, therapeutic communities for habit remedy grew to become in style within the Nineteen Sixties and ’70s. Some, like Synanon, grew to become infamous for cultlike, abusive environments. There at the moment are maybe 3,000 worldwide, researchers estimate, together with one which Mr. Kennedy has additionally praised — San Patrignano, an Italian program whose centerpiece is a extremely regarded bakery, staffed by residents.

“If we do go down the highway of huge government-funded therapeutic communities, I’d wish to see some oversight to make sure they stay as much as trendy requirements,” stated Dr. Sabet, who’s now president of the Basis for Drug Coverage Options. “We should always do away with the false dichotomy, too, between these approaches and drugs, since we all know they will work collectively for some folks.”

Ought to Mr. Kennedy be confirmed, his authority to ascertain therapeutic farms can be unsure. Constructing federal remedy farms in “depressed rural areas,” as he stated in his documentary, presumably on public land, would hit political and authorized roadblocks. Absolutely legalizing and taxing hashish to pay for the farms would require congressional motion.

Within the concluding moments of the documentary, Mr. Kennedy invoked Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist whose views on spirituality influenced Alcoholics Nameless. Dr. Jung, he stated, felt that “individuals who believed in God obtained higher quicker and that their restoration was extra sturdy and enduring than individuals who didn’t.”