RFK Jr. wants to send people on antidepressants to government "wellness farms"
RFK Jr. wants to send people on antidepressants to government "wellness farms"
The farms will "reparent" them.
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.”
Policy like this is a pretty solid example of false consciousness, isn't it? Highlight real problems in a distorted way, propose a complete non-solution to that hallucinated version of the problem
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.
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".
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".
It usually turns out like synanon
Do NOT let him cook
Concentration camps for people with mental health problems.Finally I'll be able to concentrate!
concentration camps :kelly:
If a leftist suggested reeducation camps, liberals would shoot them for suggesting gulags. Righties suggest camps, and they're a leading candidate.
Whatever this crank would actually do, as-described here it would be a good policy because it's the good kind of camp a proper Marxist would suggest (by coincidence, one must assume)
But it's the US government, so I don't believe it to end up with the good kind of camps in reality.
between prison slavery, "wellness farms", outsourcing, undocumented labor, and the return of our favorite: child labor, we have a pretty sizable reserve army of labor. Good luck going on strike!Have comrades organize riots and or strikes from inside the prisons and wellness farms, other three I'm pretty uncertain of how to combat effectively tho...
“ADHD is a food-related illness that be cured working 3-4 years on a cannabis farm”
Fuck it I'll give it a whirl
From personal experience it doesn't. Working outside doing manual labor with big ol smelly nugs all around you is pretty nice, though.
Tbf he just wants to have Fetterman shot behind a shed.
Critical support
I had a week in the mountains where I had no internet connection and did hard physical tasks for 10 hours a day every day.
I'd never felt happier. Still had ADHD though, because it's not an illness, it doesn't need to be cured and it can't.
It also helped the physical tasks where things like hiking, skiing, chopping wood, climbing, and other like things that are funThe neurodivergents... They yearn for the hills
Dog-eating sex offender has thoughts about who should be exiled from society.
this is like 70% of the plot of A Scanner Darkly, once of course all the rehabilitation farms are revealed to be raw material sources for the drugs that are being treated as addictive.
What are we farming here?
We need more friends
US really going more mask off than usual as of late
Ok I fully support this but replace "people on antidepressants" with "the bourgeoisie" and "wellness farms" with "farms".
"i wish we could force these weirdos to tough grass"
put the depressed into agricultural slavery! 
how could you possibly think that's what i meant⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We really need him as an emote
Can i play on my computer at the farm?
Just found out I'm antidepressant addict. Off to the
concentration campfarm for me.if anyone asked me 30 years ago whether it would be plausible that a politician who openly talked about having worms eat part of his brain and who talks like a frog could go around and run for president and also shit on regular people who are just trying to survive anyway they can, i'd think they took a lot of drugs and/or needed professional mental help
The implementation under capitalism would be bad, but under socialism it would be a good idea. Reconnect with the land, grow food, being part of a sober community. It sounds way better than most of what currently exists as a solution.
I'm not opposed to farm based rehab but this is not it
Only 11% on antidepressants? What the hell are the rest of y'all doing?
I abused real drugs for a decade before starting antidepressants
I still abuse drugs but also on ssri
One time about a decade ago I got prescribed some SSRI. I went to CVS and they told me it would be $250 a month. I told them I could do real drugs for that and left.
Also I was able to get the same prescription from Walmart for like $10 a month and also it didn't work like most SSRIs.
4+ cups of coffee every day
I guess the prison industrial complex only goes so far, they're going to need to make it illegal to have mental illness to boost their numbers aren't they?
#WormMoment
He wants to send you to the same kind of "wellness farm" that ol' Grampa Joe sent his auntie Rosemarie to.
No addictions are not solved by growing your own food you absolute dingus. But I can see how the
want more neutient enriched soil for their kind.He hangs around some new age spiritual types like Aubrey Marcus who are big into the plant medicines and healing rituals & practices from indigenous cultures in Central & South America (Ayahuasca etc etc). While I don't doubt that these plant medicines do offer healing to people, I do find this group of people incredibly cringe though because the lives they project are very rich from a material standpoint and the events they put together almost sound like they're big orgies (I have zero evidence that that actually takes place, just the vibes I get when they make these events 'for singles only'). Also that guy has a relative who invented the fleshlight and Aubrey himself made money selling some type of brain food cognition enhancing supplement.
Hey Fleshlights aren't so bad. They've helped a guy I know deal with his divorce (that guy is me).
Oh I mostly just find Aubrey Marcus's penetration into our culture interesting and thought it was rather funny when he endorsed RFK as an answer to our problems. The fleshlight thing was curious to me parallel to the 'singles' healing retreats and it makes me think about how sexuality has been treated in our current culture. Wishing you all you need to get through the divorce! Not an easy thing
I'm down
BREAKING: RFK Jr taps Dr. Jolly West Jr as nominee for health and human services secretary
This is some Aktion T4 shit.
in his grave rn
