Kennedy’s plan for the drug crisis: a network of “healing farms”
While Kennedy's adoption of salvage farms may be new, the concept dates back nearly a century. In 1935, the government opened the United States Narcotic Farm in Lexington, Ky., to research and treat addiction. Over the years, residents included Chet Baker and William S. Burroughs (who described the institution in his novel "Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict"). The program had high relapse rates and was contaminated by drug experiments on human subjects. In 1975, as local treatment centers began to proliferate across the country, the program was shut down.In America, therapeutic communities for addiction treatment became popular in the 1960s and 1970s. Some, like Synanon, have become notorious for abusive and cult-like environments. There are now perhaps 3,000 around the worl...