Although the embrace of Mr. Kennedy on recovery farms may be new, the idea stretches back nearly a century. In 1935, the government opened the United States Drug Farm in Lexington, Ky., to research and treat addiction. Over the years, residents have included Chet Baker and William S. Burroughs (who depicted the institution in his novel, “Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict”). The program had high relapse rates and was contaminated by human drug trials. By 1975, as local treatment centers began to proliferate across the country, the program was closed.
In America, therapeutic communities for addiction treatment became popular in the 1960s and 1970s. Some, like Synanon, became notorious for their cultlike, abusive environments. There are now perhaps 3,000 worldwide, researchers estimate, including one praised by Mr. Kennedy – San Patrignano, an Italian program whose center is a highly regarded bakery staffed by residents.
“If we go down the path of large government-sponsored therapeutic communities, I would like to see some oversight to make sure they meet modern standards,” said Dr. Sabet, who is now president of the Foundation for Drug Policy Solutions. “We should get rid of the false dichotomy, too, between these approaches and drugs, since we know they can work together for some people.”
If confirmed Mr. Kennedy, his authority to establish therapeutic farms will be uncertain. Building federal treatment farms in “occupied rural areas,” as he said in his documentary, possibly on public land, would hit political and legal roadblocks. Fully legalizing and taxing cannabis to pay for farms would require congressional action.
In the final moments of the documentary, Mr. Kennedy cited Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist whose views on spirituality influenced Alcoholics Anonymous. Dr. Jung, he said, felt that “people who believed in God got better faster and that their recovery was more durable and lasting than people who did not believe.”
