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| - Kennedy said he would create rehabilitation wellness farms where people with drug-related issues (including with psychiatric drugs) can go for a program of rehabilitation that would include job training and growing organic food for their own consumption.
However, contrary to how some people interpreted his words, Kennedy did not say or imply anyone would be "sent" to such locations against their will.
As President-elect Donald Trump nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services in November 2024, many people revisited his past controversial opinions on health.
One such opinion involved his purported proposal to send drug addicts to "wellness farms" in rural areas where they would work and attempt to end their addiction. Some posts online claimed these were "labor camps."
(X user @IvoVegter)
Posts making the claim also circulated before the election, including a viral Reddit post in October 2024 that detailed how Kennedy proposed helping people "get off" psychiatric drugs, including antidepressants. Some social media posts poked fun at the alleged wellness farms in the summer of 2024, when Kennedy was still running for president as an independent candidate.
Kennedy did indeed make comments proposing "wellness farms" as a solution to various forms of drug addiction, though he later claimed that the media misrepresented and distorted his words. However, video footage shows he made the above statement, while adding that people attending could get off psychiatric drugs "if they want to." He did not indicate anyone would be coerced into going. As such, we rate this claim as a mixture of true and false.
On July 16, 2024, Kennedy appeared on the "Latino Capitalist," a conservative podcast. He outlined his various policy proposals, including the one on drug rehabilitation which we have reproduced below. He began by discussing how he wanted to tax marijuana dispensaries and use that money for "wellness farms" (emphasis ours):
I'm going to dedicate that revenue to creating wellness farms — drug rehabilitation farms — in rural areas all over this country. The biggest industry now in rural areas is prisons. I am going to change that. 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. They're going to grow their own food, organic food, high-quality food because a lot of the behavioral issues are food-related. A lot of the illnesses are food-related. There won't be any cellphones there. There won't be any screens. We're going to reparent people, restore this connection to community. We have a whole generation of kids who are dispossessed, they're alienated, they're marginalized. Their suicide rates are exploding. … Last year, 107,000 American kids died from drug overdoses, namely fentanyl and other opiates.
[…]
You got a whole generation of kids who is damaged. I'm going to create these wellness farms where they can go to get off of illegal drugs, off of opiates, but also legal 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, to understand how to talk to people. There'll be job training, particularly in the trades.
The podcast is available on the "Latino Capitalist" YouTube page. Kennedy made the comments at the 16:30 mark:
A Mother Jones article in July 2024 reported on these statements, with the headline "RFK Jr. Wants to Send People Addicted to Antidepressants to Government 'Wellness Farms.'"After that article's publication, Kennedy posted the following statement on X, along with a link to a film titled "Recovering America: A Film About Healing Our Addiction Crisis":
I remember when Mother Jones published smart, fearless writing. Sadly, now it seems to be another organ of yellow journalism. I also remember when the Left was skeptical of Big Pharma. It wasn't that long ago.
Articles like these, with their misleading titles, grotesque distortions, and snarky tone, explain why so many people have turned away from politics—and journalism—in disgust.
If you care to know my actual take on helping address the heartbreaking epidemic of addiction and mental illness in our country, please watch this short film and judge for yourself.
The film follows Kennedy as he visits a range of drug addiction recovery programs, including The Other Side in Salt Lake City, which provides skills and training to people with criminal records and histories of drug abuse. He also visited Simple Promise Farms, which raises funds for addiction recovery programs, and where men with drug addictions work on the farm. The subjects of the film talked about their addictions to drugs including fentanyl and heroin, not drugs commonly used in psychiatric treatments.
However, in the podcast interview, Kennedy expanded the concept of a "wellness farm" to include drugs used to address mental illnesses such as depression. He said people would be supported in getting off such drugs "if they want to." Kennedy did not state that these locations were mandatory for people; rather, he said they "can" go.
Kennedy publicized a number of conspiracy theories before and during his presidential campaign. He suggested that antidepressants could be responsible for school shootings and that Wi-Fi caused cancer and "leaky brain," among others.
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