MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says he wants to transform the way the U.S. responds to addiction and the fentanyl crisis. It's called the Great American Recovery Initiative. One part of his vision is a proposal to build farm wellness camps modeled after a program in Italy. Kennedy has suggested these camps might be used to, quote, "reparent" some children. NPR addiction correspondent Brian Mann is with us now to tell us more about this. Good morning, Brian.
BRIAN MANN, BYLINE: Hi, Michel.
MARTIN: So where did this idea of reparenting children come from?
MANN: So when Kennedy was a presidential candidate in 2024, one of his big campaign policy ideas was solving the U.S. addiction and overdose crisis. And he kept coming back to a program he had learned about, a farm camp in Italy for people recovering from drug use. Here he is speaking about it on the NewsNation network.
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ROBERT F KENNEDY JR: 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.
MANN: Now, what's new, Michel, is that over the last few weeks, recordings surfaced from 2024 of Kennedy saying kids would be reparented at these camps. During a hearing in Washington last week, Senator Angela Alsobrooks, a Democrat from Maryland, asked Kennedy about this idea.
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ANGELA ALSOBROOKS: You said every Black kid can get reparented on a wellness farm. Can you admit that you said that?
MANN: And other Black lawmakers have raised concerns about this. Kennedy initially denied making the comment. But in a statement emailed to NPR, the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed Kennedy did raise this idea of reparenting. They say Kennedy was taken out of context.
MARTIN: Do we know what he did mean?
MANN: Well, Kennedy declined to answer a series of detailed questions that NPR sent. The statement from HHS said Kennedy was talking about a practice used in psychotherapy. But here's the thing. During one of those 2024 interviews on a podcast called "High Level Conversations," Kennedy was clearly talking about this San Patrignano-style farm camp when he said this about Black children.
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KENNEDY: And those kids are going to have a chance to go somewhere and get reparented, to live in a community.
MANN: And Kennedy suggested this would be a place, Michel, where children could recover from addiction but also from the use of anxiety and depression medications.
MARTIN: You actually traveled to San Patrignano, this addiction community in Italy. What did you find?
MANN: Well, it's a beautiful place. It sits on rolling hills above the Adriatic Sea. There are vineyards and workshops. But here's something interesting. I found the leaders of San Patrignano were actually confused by Kennedy's interest in their addiction program. They have no record of Kennedy ever visiting them or calling to ask about their community. And that may explain why Kennedy has often described San Patrignano in ways that are just factually wrong. For one thing, the community is much smaller than Kennedy portrays it. And here's another thing. It's not actually for kids. The vast majority of San Patrignano's residents are adult men.
MARTIN: And you've also been talking to addiction experts in the U.S. I mean, this is something you've been covering for years now. Do they think this kind of farm program can help in the U.S.?
MANN: I'm hearing a lot of concern. What troubles health experts in the U.S. is that San Patrignano rejects the use of scientifically proven medications like buprenorphine and methadone that have shown for decades that they can help people addicted to opioids like fentanyl. I spoke with Monica Barzanti at San Patrignano. She told me they believe true healing from addiction only comes through personal growth, not medical care.
MONICA BARZANTI: They are not patients. They are not clients. Nobody can cure you. You have to rebuild your own biography.
MANN: But research shows that for people addicted to fentanyl, heroin and other opioids, abstinence programs like San Patrignano that don't include medical support can actually raise a person's danger of overdose and death. I spoke about this with Robert Heimer. He studies addiction treatments at Yale University.
ROBERT HEIMER: We know that abstinence-based programs fail over and over again, often very quickly. Once their tolerance goes down and they relapse, they're at enormous risk.
MANN: Yeah. And studies shows a lot of fatal overdoses in the U.S. actually happen right after a person goes through the kind of abstinence from drug use that happens at places like San Patrignano.
MARTIN: So now that Kennedy is health secretary, is he making actual changes to addiction policy?
MANN: Yeah, there have been big changes already. HHS has cut funding for research focused on addiction health. They've slashed support for harm reduction efforts that are designed to help people who use drugs avoid blood-borne viruses like HIV, AIDS and hepatitis. And in rolling out this new national recovery initiative, Kennedy has talked about focusing on wellness, abstinence and faith-centered approaches. He says these efforts helped him recover from his own heroin use. He says he wants to use addiction policy to bring about what he called a spiritual renaissance for people who use drugs.
MARTIN: That's NPR addiction correspondent Brian Mann. Brian, thank you.
MANN: Thank you, Michel.
(SOUNDBITE OF JACK WILKINS' "RED CLAY") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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