In a virtual event last week that was billed as a “Latino Town Hall,” presidential candidate and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. unveiled his plan to overhaul addiction treatment programs. Speaking during a live recording of the Latino Capitalist podcast, Kennedy described opioid, antidepressant, and ADHD “addicts” receiving treatment on tech-free “wellness farms,” where they would spend as much as three or four years growing organic produce.
How to pay for these farms? Kennedy had an answer. With money generated through a sales tax on cannabis products, Kennedy said, “I’m going to dedicate that revenue to creating wellness farms—drug rehabilitation farms, in rural areas all over this country,” he said. “I’m going to make it so people can go, if you’re convicted of a drug offense, or if you have a drug problem, you can go to one of these places for free.”
On the farms, he said, residents would grow their own organic food—which would help them recover from addiction, “because a lot of the behavioral issues are food related. A lot of the illnesses are food related.” The idea that addiction is connected to consuming non-organic food is not backed by robust science—but it’s in line with many other unfounded claims that Kennedy has made in the past about pesticides and non-organic food causing chronic disease, behavioral problems, and autism.
Cell phones and other screens, he said, would be prohibited. “We’re going to re-parent people and restore connection to community,” he promised. “We have a whole generation of kids who are dispossessed, they’re alienated, their marginalized, their suicide rates are exploding; the second largest killer for young people is drug addiction.” Kennedy has suggested in the past that 5G cell phone technology could cause health problems.
The range of people receiving such treatment could potentially include wide swaths of the population, since the wellness farms wouldn’t just be for people addicted to illegal drugs, but also for people who are taking antidepressants and ADHD medications. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 11 percent of Americans ages 12 and older take antidepressants, and about 4 percent of Americans between the ages of five and 64 take medication for ADHD.
I’m going to create these wellness farms where they can go to get off of illegal drugs, off of opiates, but also illegal drugs, other psychiatric drugs, if they want to, to get off of SSRIs, to get off of benzos, to get off of Adderall, and to spend time as much time as they need—three or four years if they need it—to learn to get reparented, to reconnect with communities.
Last year, Kennedy posited during a Twitter spaces event with Elon Musk that antidepressants could be to blame for school shootings.
The Kennedy campaign didn’t respond to Mother Jones’ request for comment on the remarks that Kennedy made during this event.
“We have a whole generation of kids who are dispossessed, they’re alienated, their marginalized, their suicide rates are exploding; the second largest killer for young people is drug addiction.”
I’ve finally arrived at a question after years: is he serious? Is this the cynical use of the material conditions to enrich oneself or does he earnestly believe in the inversion of drugs causing the dispossession, alienation, and marginalization? I’ve never seen an institution, philosophy, or solution besides triage and liberalism assert that one ought to chase symptoms instead of root causes. I could have made the leap in primary school that people cope with pain with drugs. The idea that you’re going to further dispossess and alienate them to fix it is logic that would give a toddler a tantrum. Are they serious? I would respect them more of they weren’t. You want to appropriate capital (which, of course, is made with labor) for your own hallucination project to make problems worse on their face? Surely you just mean to make a lot of money, right?
Liberals literally don’t understand why people abuse substances. The very simple version of reality is that people live a bad life -> they use drugs, but this requires an acknowledgement that people live bad lives and why that happens. Liberals who follow through on this investigation must arrive at the conclusion that people are harmed by capitalism can either accept this, which results in them becoming leftists, or, much more common, reject this and hold on to the idea that capitalism is good.
To justify this, they have to blame the victims of capitalism for their drug abuse: they’re lazy, they don’t want to be helped, nothing can be done etc. Liberals will backwardly justify the current existence of things to hold on to the notion that capitalism is good, rather than be challenged on their ideals.
This is why they never talk about preventing the root causes. That would require an acknowledgement that the root cause of societal misery is capitalism, and thus require a change to the status quo, which is incompatible with liberalism.
I guess I just have an easier time imagining myself in a position of power going “yeah, the status quo is tragic, but I’m making a lot of money off of it” as opposed to stumbling into a position of power by playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey completely blind to people’s problems. Maybe they didn’t ask “why?” enough as a child. It seems so insular! You’d have to have even avoided interacting with the opioid epidemic because there’s plenty of stories of in-group people getting a broken ankle playing tennis, taking some prescribed opioids, and getting got. If you ever dare to ask “why were there so many opioids?” you’d find yourself back at capitalism. I pray to be awakened from any biases that would worm up my brain like that.
I think he is serious
RFK has never been a particularly clever individual, I think he earnestly believes this is a good solution. He would have to know it would be received less than warmly, so it isn’t like he’s supporting it for political points, he just really thinks it is a grand idea
The idea that you’re going to further dispossess and alienate them to fix it is logic that would give a toddler a tantrum. Are they serious?
This. I don’t know how many of posts here liking this idea is ironic and how many are serious, but the idea of sending people with already huge problems to what is essentialy labour camps, especially under capitalism, and especially especially in USA with for profit prison system and for profit healthcare system is too horrible to even joke about “good time on farm” and “touching grass”.
As the CSE (Communist Simpsons Enjoyer) of Hexbear, you’ll see that I somehow manage to use references on a pretty daily clip
I sorta love the idea.
Imagine having some idyllic, healing forest available to you when the world gets to be too much. With mellow music, birdsong, activities, etc.
But the idea is what I love. I don’t have any faith in the execution.
Getting outside and interacting with (fairly) normal people in a place I enjoy has helped me a bunch. But it isn’t a cure all, doesn’t resolve external material conditions that worsen depression etc for me and others, and 100% the “nature camps” turn into easy targets for “list of people we should kill”.
Do NOT let him cook
Concentration camps for people with mental health problems.
