Kennedy's Plan for the Drug Crisis: A Network of 'Healing Farms'

Although Mr. Kennedy's commitment to recreational farming may be new, the concept dates back nearly a century. In 1935, the government opened the United States Narcotic Farm in Lexington, Kentucky to research and treat addiction. Over the years, residents have included Chet Baker and William S. Burroughs (who portrayed the facility in his novel “Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict”). The program had high relapse rates and was marred by drug experimentation on humans. In 1975, as local treatment centers began to proliferate across the country, the program was discontinued.

In America, therapeutic communities for addiction treatment became popular in the 1960s and 1970s. Some, like Synanon, became notorious for their cult-like, abusive environment. There are now about 3,000 worldwide, researchers estimate, including one that Mr. Kennedy has also praised – San Patrignano, an Italian program whose centerpiece is a highly regarded resident bakery.

“If we go down the path to large, government-funded therapeutic communities, I would like to see oversight to ensure that they meet modern standards,” said Dr. Sabet, who is now president of the Foundation for Drug Policy Solutions. “We should also eliminate the false dichotomy between these approaches and medications, knowing that they can work together for some people.”

If Mr. Kennedy is confirmed, his authority to establish medicinal farms would be uncertain. Building federal treatment farms in “disadvantaged rural areas,” as he said in his documentary, presumably on public lands, would face political and legal obstacles. Full legalization and taxation of cannabis to fund farms would require congressional action.

In the documentary's closing moments, Mr. Kennedy invoked Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist whose views on spirituality influenced Alcoholics Anonymous. Dr. Jung felt that “people who believed in God recovered more quickly and that their recovery was more permanent and lasting than people who did not believe.”