On April 21, the first day of the 14th annual Rx and Illicit Drug Summit, organizers announced a surprise presenter for the closing plenary on April 24: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., newly minted Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and vocal proponent of building labor camps for people who use drugs.
Formerly known as the Rx Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit, this year it was located in Nashville. HMP Global, the health care marketing company that created the summit, advertises it as the premiere conference for stakeholders in the overdose crisis—where attendees can “learn about what is working in prevention, treatment and law enforcement.” Some of this year’s speakers are academics and public health researchers who focus their work on harm reduction, but it’s fair to say that’s not where the summit’s priorities lie.
Government agencies and for-profit partners have never exactly been at the forefront of harm reduction, and it’s clear what demographics the summit caters to; the registration fee is over $1,000. It’s always skewed to the right, and it’s not necessarily surprising that HMP Global is now platforming a man who famously wants to build hundreds of “healing farms” into which people facing drug charges can be sent indefinitely to “learn the discipline of hard work,” and who wants us to believe this is an alternative to incarceration. But when RFK Jr. is the overdose-crisis expert addressing an audience filled with many of the nation’s major players in drug policy, that’s still a good indication of a five-alarm fire.
Other speakers included United States Attorney General Pam Bondi (R) and Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn (R). Several people who attended Blackburn’s panel told Filter that her thoughts on overdose prevention were mostly about the importance of border security, including that “all options are on the table” when it comes to President Donald Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act.
Attendees of Bondi’s session told Filter that she appeared to confuse stimulants with benzodiazepines, describing students “using Xanax to study.” And that she repeatedly claimed the majority of the illicit fentanyl in the US is brought in by migrants crossing the southern border. Yet there was still clapping and whooping coming from the audience.
The harm of this type of rhetoric isn’t that it’s partisan, but that it’s rife with misinformation, whether intentionally or out of ignorance. While the summit has had this problem in previous years, this year it’s a frighteningly dystopian indication of what the future may hold as the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and other relevant federal agencies are dismantled. Surprise speakers announced at the last minute have not been the norm at past summits. And other than National Institute on Drug Abuse Director Nora Volkow and National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya, all of the “featured” speakers highlighted by organizers were elected officials.
RFK Jr., who’s widely known to be in recovery from problematic heroin use in the 1980s and reportedly attends nine AA meetings per week, has spoken publicly about being influenced by the work of psychiatrist and philosopher Carl Jung. Jung wrote of man’s “spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness,” and how drugs and alcohol distract from this quest. Like the Protestant work ethic that teaches us how godliness and salvation are found through hard work and suffering, it all conveniently dovetails with the capitalist need to maintain the supply of human labor.
It’s difficult to guess the likelihood that the new industry he describes will actually be created. Building hundreds of “healing farms” would be expensive, but this has not stopped the US from letting private contractors continuously build new prisons to keep up with the incarcerated labor force. Especially as the Trump administration takes extraordinary measures to remove many of the most underpaid and exploited workers, there’s always a need for more warm bodies.
Image of RFK Jr. via Washington State House Democrats