Bold pitch to tackle America’s opioid crisis, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s pick for Health and Human Services Secretary, has unveiled a radical plan: legalize marijuana, free nonviolent drug offenders, and transform rural prisons into “wellness drug rehabilitation farms.” But history reveals a devastating flaw in this approach—one that could set addiction treatment back decades.
Nearly a century ago, the U.S. launched a strikingly similar experiment, and it flopped. The Federal U.S. Narcotic Farm, a sprawling government-run facility in Lexington, Kentucky, promised to rehabilitate people with drug addictions through labor, therapy, and an idyllic farm setting. It housed jazz legends like Chet Baker and Sonny Rollins, encouraged music and community engagement, and even conducted groundbreaking addiction research. But despite its utopian vision, the farm failed where it mattered most: keeping people off drugs.
By the time the 1950s rolled around, researchers at the farm had uncovered something far more effective than isolation and farm work—methadone maintenance therapy. Pioneered by Dr. Marie Nyswander and Dr. Vincent Dole, this treatment revolutionized addiction medicine, allowing patients to stabilize their lives without the constant cycle of relapse and withdrawal. Unlike the failed abstinence-only models of the past, methadone therapy proved that managing addiction as a chronic illness, rather than a moral failing, was the key to long-term recovery.
Yet, despite its success, methadone remains controversial. The stigma surrounding it has kept access limited, with heavy regulations preventing widespread use. Today, fewer than two percent of U.S. doctors prescribe methadone, and nearly half of the country lacks access to a clinic. Meanwhile, RFK Jr.’s plan to replace prisons with addiction farms ignores this hard-earned medical progress in favor of a nostalgic but ineffective strategy.
Kennedy isn’t wrong to emphasize community, structure, and nutrition in recovery—these elements matter. But his proposal eerily mirrors a failed past, one that left people trapped in a cycle of relapse. If history has taught us anything, it’s that wellness farms won’t solve the opioid crisis. Methadone will. The real question is: will policymakers listen to history, or repeat its mistakes?
