How Will [Kennedy’s Plan] Fix the Overdose Crisis? — Source: [RFK Jr. says he’ll fix the overdose crisis]
“I think [Kennedy’s plan] would be an enormous step backward,” said Maia Szalavitz, an author and activist who used heroin and other drugs before entering recovery.
She said, “Over the last 20 years we have tried to move away from treating addiction as a sin rather than a medical disorder.” We’ve been trying to get people to take up medications that we know will cut their death risk in half, and he seems like he wants to go back on all that.
The vast majority of researchers, doctors and front-line addiction treatment workers agree that scientific data shows medications like buprenorphine, methadone and naloxone are game changers when it comes to treating the deadliest street drugs, including fentanyl and heroin.
The treatments were made more affordable by the Biden administration. The drop in overdose deaths has been due in part to those programs.
But Kennedy’s approach to addiction care is controversial, described by many drug policy experts as risky, in part because it focuses on the moral dimension of recovery rather than modern, science-based medication and health care.
His campaign film included a scene that blames the use of methadone, a prescription medication, for the high-risk street-drug use visible on the streets of San Francisco.
“What we have mostly heard from Kennedy is a skepticism broadly of medications and a focus on the 12-step and faith-based therapy,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, an expert on drug policy at the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C., think tank.
That’s great news for President Trump because a lot of important groups have supported him. Felbab- Brown said access to medications is fundamental for recovery and stabilization of people’s lives. Many of the 12-step programs reject medication.
She’s worried that under Kennedy’s leadership, the Department of Health and Human Services could shrink or eliminate funding for science-based medical treatment and instead focus on spirituality-based approaches that appear to help a relatively small percentage of people who experience addiction.
The Bringing a New Industry to Rural America: Sensitivities to Addiction in an Italian Healing Farm: A Case Study of Robert F. Kennedy
“I’ve seen this beautiful model that they have in Italy called San Patrignano, where there are 2,000 kids who work on a large farm in a healing center … and that’s what we need to build here,” Kennedy said during a town hall-style appearance on the cable channel NewsNation last year.
Kennedy proposed a plan that would force people with addiction to go to camps that would put them in jail if they wouldn’t accept care.
In a 2020 PBS documentary there are depictions of people with addiction being held in shackles or confined in cages. The farm’s current leaders have described the documentary as biased and unfair.
He said that he would build rehab centers in all of the country, as well as healing camps where people could go to get their lives back together.
Szalavitz, the author and activist who is herself in recovery, noted that the Italian program doesn’t include science-based medical care, including opioid treatment medications. She said Kennedy’s fascination with the model reflects a lack of medical and scientific expertise.
“It really is great to include people who have personal experience of something like, say, addiction in policymaking. Szalavitz said you don’t become an addiction expert simply because you struggled with addiction. “You have to engage with the research literature. You need to understand more than your anecdote. If you don’t do harm to people, you’ll end up doing it.
Kennedy’s plan doesn’t seem to include facilities that offer proper treatment for people facing severe addiction, according to Humphreys.
Mr. Humphreys said that he clearly cares about addicted people. I have doubts about the plans he’s articulated.
RFK Jr is doing well. He wants to expand the therapeutic community model for recovering addicts,” Tom Wolf, a San Francisco-based activist who is in recovery from fentanyl and opioid addiction, wrote on the social media site X. “I support him for HHS secretary.”
Kennedy credits his faith, 12-step programs, and the influence of a book by Carl Jung with helping him beat his addiction.
Kennedy promised during a film on addiction that he was going to bring a new industry to rural America. Hundreds of healing farms are going to be built to allow American kids to rediscover America’s soil.
Kennedy was a heroin user for more than a decade in his youth, and he speaks about it frequently. He said in his second confirmation hearing that he has been in recovery for 42 years.
Kennedy would be able to exert control over the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal programs fighting addiction if he is confirmed as head of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Kennedy was quoted last year as saying that he became a drug addict at the age of 15. “I was addicted for 14 years. During that time, when you’re an addict, you’re living against conscience … and you kind of push God to the peripheries of your life.”
Kennedy said in his testimony that outdoor work should be used for addiction treatment, but that no one should have to go kicking and screaming.
When antidepressants become addictive: Sens. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a Republican Senate confirmation hearing on depression medication classes
The study found that about one in 35 people using antidepressants have significant withdrawal symptoms. It’s important to have a doctor’s help when taking the SSRIs.
During his Senate confirmation hearing to serve as Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. suggested antidepressant drugs may be as addictive as heroin — a claim contradicted by research.
Kennedy said in the hearing that he was aware of people in his family who had had a worse time getting off of the drugs than people who were on heroin.
Though he doesn’t have medical training, he is a critic of the drugs that are included in the depression medication class.