Kennedy’s plan for the drug crisis: a network of “medicinal farms”

While Kennedy’s concept of regenerative farms may be novel, the concept dates back almost a century. In 1935 the government opened Drug farm in the United States IN LexingtonKy., for addiction research and treatment. Residents have been involved over the years Chet Baker AND William S. Burroughs (who portrayed the institution in his novel “Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict”). The program had a high relapse rate and was tainted by human drug experimentation. In 1975, as local treatment centers began to open across the country, the program was closed.

In America therapeutic communities in the treatment of addictions has become popular in 1960s and the 70’s. Some, like Synanonbecame known for its cultish, abusive environment. Perhaps they are now 3,000 worldwideresearchers estimate, including one that Kennedy also praised — San Patrignano, an Italian program centered on a highly acclaimed bakery staffed by local residents.

“If we do go down the route of creating immense government-funded treatment communities, I would like to see some oversight to ensure they are held to state-of-the-art standards,” said Dr. Sabet, now president of the Foundation for Drug Policy Solutions. “We should also get rid of the false dichotomy between these approaches and medications, because we know they can work together for some people.”

If Mr. Kennedy is confirmed, his authority to establish healing farms will be uncertain. Building federal therapeutic farms in “disadvantaged rural areas,” he said in his document, likely on public lands, would face political and legal obstacles. Fully legalization and taxation of cannabis paying the farms would require congressional action.

In the closing moments of the documentary, Kennedy cited Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist whose views on spirituality influenced Alcoholics Anonymous. Dr. Jung, he said, felt that “people who believed in God recovered faster and their recovery was more lasting and lasting than that of people who did not believe.”