Kennedy's approach to recovery farming may be novel, but the concept dates back nearly a century. In 1935, the government opened the U.S. Drug Farm in Lexington, Kentucky, for the purpose of researching and treating addiction. Over the years, residents included Chet Baker and William S. Burroughs (who portrayed the facility in his novel “Junkie''). The program had a high relapse rate and was tainted by human drug experimentation. By 1975, the program ended as local treatment centers began to proliferate across the country.
Therapeutic communities for addiction treatment became popular in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. Some companies, like Synanon, were notorious for cult-like and abusive environments. Researchers estimate there are now perhaps 3,000 such homes around the world, including San Patrignano, an Italian program praised by Mr. Kennedy, whose centerpiece is staffed by residents. It is a highly reputed bakery.
“If we're going to go down the path of large-scale, government-funded treatment communities, I'd like to see some oversight to make sure they meet modern standards,” he said. said Dr. Sabet, Chairman of the Solutions Foundation. . “We also need to remove the false dichotomy between these approaches and drug therapy, because we know these approaches can be used together in some people.”
If Kennedy is confirmed, his authority to establish healing farms would be uncertain. As he said in the documentary, building federal treatment farms on public land would likely run into political and legal hurdles. Congressional action would be required to fully legalize cannabis and tax it to pay farms.
In the final moments of the documentary, Mr. Kennedy cites Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, whose views on spirituality influenced Alcoholics Anonymous. Dr. Jung said, “People who believed in God recovered faster and found their recovery to be more durable than those who did not believe.''
