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Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ethan Nadelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production

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Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the

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Speaker 1: show where we talk about all things drugs. But any

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Speaker 1: views expressed here do not represent those of my Heart Media,

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Speaker 1: Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, as an

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Speaker 1: inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not even

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Speaker 1: represent my own. And nothing contained in this show should

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Speaker 1: be used as medical advice or encouragement to use any

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Speaker 1: type of drugs. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. So today we're gonna

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Speaker 1: delve into some history on a remarkable place called the

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Speaker 1: Narcotic Farm. The Narcotic Farm that was in Lexington, Kentucky,

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Speaker 1: created nineteen thirties as a place to sort of simultaneously

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Speaker 1: punish and treat drug addicts. Now, my guest, who is

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Speaker 1: this an extraordinary academic is Nancy Campbell. She's a professor

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Speaker 1: at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, which is outside Albany, New York.

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Speaker 1: She's been a leading drug scholar for many years. She's

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Speaker 1: an historian of science and technology who's focused on legal

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Speaker 1: and illegal drugs and on harm reduction. She's written two

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Speaker 1: books on gender and addiction, but she's done also two

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Speaker 1: books that are relevant to the subject at hand. One

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Speaker 1: is a book she wrote some years ago called Discovering Addiction,

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Speaker 1: about the science and politics of substance abuse research, and

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Speaker 1: the other one is the book called The Narcotic Farm,

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Speaker 1: the rise and fall of America's first prison for drug addicts. So, Nancy,

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Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining me on Psychoactive. I'm

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Speaker 1: delighted to be here. Ethan. Well, you know, I should

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Speaker 1: also tell our audience that you and I have, you know,

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Speaker 1: cross paths a few times over the years, but our

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Speaker 1: principal intersection was just a few months ago in June

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Speaker 1: of this year, when we both attended the conference of

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Speaker 1: an organization called Alcohol and Drug Historians Society a d

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Speaker 1: h S, which was a place where I met all

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Speaker 1: sorts of interesting people I want to have as guests

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Speaker 1: on Psychoactive, and you're the first one from that conference

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Speaker 1: I've invited, to be honest, So thank you so much

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Speaker 1: for doing this with me. So let's just jump into

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Speaker 1: this thing. I mean, obviously, this history about the creation

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Speaker 1: of a sort of narcotic farm, a kind of cross

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Speaker 1: between a prison and a treatment program that was set

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Speaker 1: up in Lexington by the US government in the nineteen thirties.

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Speaker 1: At what brought you to be interested in this place? Well, so,

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Speaker 1: I wrote a dissertation in the nineteen nineties about US

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Speaker 1: drug policy in the nineteen In the nineteen fifties, there

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Speaker 1: were a bunch of hearings. They're called the Daniel Hearings,

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Speaker 1: and they were televised and they were held in seven

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Speaker 1: cities around the country, and there were a lot of

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Speaker 1: witnesses which testified in these hearings, and the New York hearings.

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Speaker 1: Um New York City hearings involved these doctors and researchers, scientists,

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Speaker 1: and what struck me about them was that they were

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Speaker 1: all from Lexington, Kentucky, and they all sounded a little

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Speaker 1: bit like drug policy reformers sound today. They saw drug

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Speaker 1: users as human beings. They definitely did not think that

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Speaker 1: incarceration or criminalization was the way to go, and they

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Speaker 1: argued with the police and the law enforcement and the

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Speaker 1: federal apparatus because they thought that drug addiction should be

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Speaker 1: placed under the banner of medicine and that it was

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Speaker 1: a health problem. And that sounds very familiar to our

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Speaker 1: ears and so I got curious about them. I thought,

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Speaker 1: you know, what did they put in the water in Lexington,

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Speaker 1: Kentucky that would lead this group of researchers and doctors

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Speaker 1: and people who treated people who were drug addicts and

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Speaker 1: they called them addicts in those days, to make that argument.

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Speaker 1: And that turned out to be a harder question to

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Speaker 1: answer than I realized, and also easier because they were

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Speaker 1: all at the U S Narcotic Farm in Lexington, Kentucky,

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Speaker 1: and they were all federal employees of the Public Health Service,

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Speaker 1: the US Public Health Service, and they were there to

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Speaker 1: kind of try to discover what they could about this

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Speaker 1: this disease, and they thought of it as a chronic

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Speaker 1: relapsing disease. And so they were an interesting group, and

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Speaker 1: I tracked them from the mid nineties um into the

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Speaker 1: early two thousands. I didn't have an opportunity to really

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Speaker 1: track them down. And then in the early two thousand's,

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Speaker 1: I thought it's time to try to figure out what

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Speaker 1: this American institution was before everything about it really disappeared.

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Speaker 1: I see, now we should explain to our audience, you know,

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Speaker 1: when these institutions emerged. I mean, I will talk basically

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Speaker 1: about the one in Lexington, which was the key one,

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Speaker 1: but there was another one in Fort Worth which did

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Speaker 1: not have a whole research program attached to it. But

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Speaker 1: when we think about the emergence of these things, when

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Speaker 1: Congress authorizes them in the nineteen thirties and when they're

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Speaker 1: created in nineteen thirties, let's set the context for this,

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Speaker 1: because I think you know, some of the our audience

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Speaker 1: will know that you go back to nineteenth century and

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Speaker 1: drugs like morphine and cocaine were legal, legally available, widely prescribed,

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Speaker 1: could be gotten over the counter, ordered by mail order.

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Speaker 1: They were recommended for, you know, all sorts of aches

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Speaker 1: and pains. And then you see in the early twentieth century,

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Speaker 1: late nine or early twenties century, kind of growing backlash,

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Speaker 1: growing concerns. Heroin had been invented in eight initially a

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Speaker 1: cost suppression. People begin to realize it's it's dangerous. People

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Speaker 1: can begin to realize the dangers of cocaine, and so

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Speaker 1: you get the nineteen fourteen Harrison Narcotic Act, which begins

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Speaker 1: to change the whole perspective of US drug policy. So

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Speaker 1: if you could take us a little bit through that

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Speaker 1: history from around fourteen, the Harrison Narcotic Act and the

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Speaker 1: Supreme Court, and how we land up in a much

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Speaker 1: more punitive situation within a decade or so. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: actually a really interesting history and relevant to today's discussions.

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Speaker 1: So the Harrison Act was a tax act, and it

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Speaker 1: was not at all clear to anyone how exactly that

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Speaker 1: was going to influence the practice of medicine, which had

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Speaker 1: veered away from using the opiates and over prescribing the

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Speaker 1: opiates um in the early twentieth century. So heroin, for instance,

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Speaker 1: in the US was never indiscriminately available. It might be prescribed,

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Speaker 1: but it was never really used medically, and so that,

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Speaker 1: uh was an interesting thing. In nineteen fourteen, um the

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Speaker 1: Harrison Act, there weren't that many people who were that

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Speaker 1: concerned really honestly about the problems of opiate addiction. However,

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Speaker 1: once the Act went into effect, there were a lot

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Speaker 1: of people who were using medically using morphine, and that

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Speaker 1: meant that there were suddenly a lot of people who

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Speaker 1: were basically trying to get off morphine. And so we

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Speaker 1: started in the US morphine maintenance clinics, and the morphine

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Speaker 1: maintenance clinics went into effect towards the end of the

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Speaker 1: of the teens of the nineteen tens, there was a

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Speaker 1: lot of backlash to these morphine maintenance clinics, and they

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Speaker 1: were in cities like Shreveport, Louisiana, or Jacksonville, Florida. The

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Speaker 1: New York City clinic they were shut down in the

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Speaker 1: early nineteen twenties. So by nineteen twenty one two they

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Speaker 1: were mainly shut down for a variety of reasons, but

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Speaker 1: mainly having to do with prosecution of the Harrison Act,

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Speaker 1: because physicians began to be prosecuted, so that meant that

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Speaker 1: physicians began to be scared. So these clinics that had

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Speaker 1: popped over the years, were they actual see maintenance clinics

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Speaker 1: or are they more detox clinics designed to get people off. No,

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Speaker 1: they were they were maintenance clinics, but they functioned as

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Speaker 1: detox clinics eventually, and they were shut down rapidly, so

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Speaker 1: there was no real attention to the patient at that

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Speaker 1: point and just doing detox. Even the ones saying we're

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Speaker 1: going to give you declining doses to get you off morphine,

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Speaker 1: even those ones start getting shut down by the authorities. Yes,

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Speaker 1: so in this era, it's the Treasury Department which enforced

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Speaker 1: prohibition they inforced, you know, they're they're doing the work

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Speaker 1: rather than the Federal Bureau of Narcotics doesn't really start

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Speaker 1: up until nineteen and so you have this period of

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Speaker 1: time when it's really very unclear whether physicians are gonna

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Speaker 1: It becomes clear to physicians that they are in danger

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Speaker 1: of prosecution if they continue to maintain their patients on morphine,

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Speaker 1: and so they basically eradicate the practice of morphine inuntenance

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Speaker 1: and they switch a lot of people onto barbiturates, onto

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Speaker 1: other sedatives, other drugs, and they basically create a kind

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Speaker 1: of criminalization that gets heightened towards the end of the twenties.

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Speaker 1: And in the end of the twenties and the late twenties.

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Speaker 1: You remember nineteen twenty nine. Everyone knows that's the year

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Speaker 1: of the Great Depression. But in early nineteen the US Congress,

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Speaker 1: prior to the Great Depression beginning, they legislate the building

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Speaker 1: of these narcotic farms. Because by that time there is

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Speaker 1: overcrowding in prisons. About a third of the people who

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Speaker 1: are in US federal prisons are drug users, and they

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Speaker 1: decide that they don't want prisons containing drug users, and

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Speaker 1: they decide to essentially divert them too large federal narcotic farms.

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Speaker 1: And so in the twenties and thirties, right there is

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Speaker 1: an attempt, a real attempt to find a cure. The

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Speaker 1: idea is science can find a cure for drug addiction,

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Speaker 1: and if we can only give our researchers are scientists,

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Speaker 1: enough support, then we will be able to cure what

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Speaker 1: is clearly too many a disease, and they call it

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Speaker 1: a disease throughout that period. So the U s Narcotic

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Speaker 1: Farm is authorized to be built by the US Congress

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Speaker 1: in the early early in the year of nine. So

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Speaker 1: I recently came across a new book by a fellow

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Speaker 1: named Kenny Anderson, who I know from the world of

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Speaker 1: sort of harm reduction advocacy around alcohol. But he has

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Speaker 1: a new little book called From Inebriate Asylums to Narcotic Farms,

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Speaker 1: and one thing he does is also placed the narcotic

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Speaker 1: farm approach in this tradition of inebriate asylums of sending

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Speaker 1: you know, people who are addicted to alcohol in a

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Speaker 1: severe way to these asylums for some sort of quote

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Speaker 1: unquote treatment and for segregating them from the general population.

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Speaker 1: And I was curious. I mean, I didn't see much

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Speaker 1: about this in the Narcotic Farm book. But do you

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Speaker 1: see this as part of the broader kind of you know,

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Speaker 1: zeitgeist of what's going on and the way people are

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Speaker 1: thinking about addiction or in fact, is the narcotic and

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Speaker 1: alcohol things so separate that you would say that they

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Speaker 1: don't really overlap in any way. No, I I would

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Speaker 1: say they do overlap, and that move from an asylum. Right.

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Speaker 1: The thing about the asylums was that people of all

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Speaker 1: kinds were in those, right. They might be alcoholics, they

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Speaker 1: might be people who have co occurring mental health disorders

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Speaker 1: with alcoholism or without, with drug addiction or without, and

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Speaker 1: so you might have people who have no co occurring

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Speaker 1: disorders but who are drug users also would sometimes be

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Speaker 1: placed in those settings, and states, you know, did different

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Speaker 1: things with them, but they definitely lumped everybody together. The

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Speaker 1: Narcotic Farm was an attempt to separate out people whose

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Speaker 1: sole problem was drug addiction narcotic addiction, and narcotics was

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Speaker 1: a catchall term at that time that did refer to

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Speaker 1: both opiates and cocaine, which is a little bit hard

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Speaker 1: for us to understand because they are drugs that do

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Speaker 1: very different things have very different effects. However, it was

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Speaker 1: basically um what became the illicit market after the Harrison

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Speaker 1: Narcotic Act. And so the narcotic farms did not accept

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Speaker 1: alcoholics and did not even like to accept barbiturate users,

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Speaker 1: although they did and they did study and try to

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Speaker 1: figure out how to respond to barbiturates um withdrawal because

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Speaker 1: that can cause seizures and death. They were primarily made

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Speaker 1: for the opioid user, and at that time that meant

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Speaker 1: heroin and that meant morphine. Now many many morphine users

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Speaker 1: and heroin users would also use kane, but they did

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Speaker 1: not regard it as their primary drug of choice, shall

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Speaker 1: we say, And so that and other drugs were also

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Speaker 1: very little represented in the narcotic farm. So cannabis, for instance,

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Speaker 1: although that was studied slightly and people did refer to it,

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Speaker 1: it was not thought of as an addictive substance in

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Speaker 1: anything like the same way. These were really made for

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Speaker 1: opiate users, you know, the opium problem. They're solving the

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Speaker 1: opium problem. So the US Congress is solving the opium

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Speaker 1: problem by building these farms. These large and they were

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Speaker 1: they were a thousand acres and they were large buildings,

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Speaker 1: large farms, sort of congregate care for people who have

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Speaker 1: opium problems, and the idea was six months of essentially

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Speaker 1: drying out and you'd be good. But the narcotic farms

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Speaker 1: were also they were very interesting as instance, just to

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Speaker 1: be clear here you say the narcotic farms, we were

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Speaker 1: basically talking about two. Write the Lexington, the most famous

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Speaker 1: one has opened up in ninety five and that has

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Speaker 1: a major research part that we'll talk about later in

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Speaker 1: our discussion. And then Fort Worth, Texas, which is the

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Speaker 1: second one, opened up a few years later. And I

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Speaker 1: think it's important, you know, for our listeners to know

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Speaker 1: that when Lexington's launched, it's a big deal. None of

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Speaker 1: the stuff we're talking about was secret. I mean, when

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Speaker 1: Lexington gets opened, the surgeon generals there, the governor of

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Speaker 1: Kentucky's there, there's national media that's describing the narcotic farm

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Speaker 1: is everything from quote unquote a new deal for the

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Speaker 1: drug addict to quote unquote a million dollar flop house

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Speaker 1: for junkies. So I interrupted you there and saying, so

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Speaker 1: why was it called a farm? Yeah, so that it's

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Speaker 1: it's pretty interesting. It was an actual farm. They sought

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Speaker 1: for at arable land, and so there were there were

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Speaker 1: contests across the country for first of all, where would

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Speaker 1: these things be cited. And remember this is the depression,

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Speaker 1: and so cities and municipalities would compete to get federal jobs,

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Speaker 1: and there were also competitions for what they would be named.

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Speaker 1: And this was really thought of as an alternative to prison.

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Speaker 1: This was thought of as a new deal for the

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Speaker 1: drug addict, and that is how it was represented in

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Speaker 1: things like editorial cartoons and so. The U S Narcotic Farm,

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Speaker 1: and in its early days it was called that. But

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Speaker 1: after a while people began to realize that there's a

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Speaker 1: sort of joke in that, and that is that what

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Speaker 1: are they doing growing narcotics there? You know, poppies or

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Speaker 1: marijuana or whatever it might be. Um And so they

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Speaker 1: gradually kind of moved away from using the term farm,

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Speaker 1: but the farm was already within the lore of the

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Speaker 1: drug using population. And in when the farm opens to

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Speaker 1: great fanfare, I mean, this was the US Congress's answer

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Speaker 1: to the opium problem. Is this massive, beautiful, very large structure.

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Speaker 1: It's still there today. It's just a prison, but it's

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Speaker 1: jointly run right by both the Bureau Prisons and the

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Speaker 1: Public Health Division in the US government. Right, it's a

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Speaker 1: joint enterprise of the two. So there's both the punishment

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Speaker 1: side and there's the kind of rehab research. I kind

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Speaker 1: of merged together in a kind of awkward sort of way, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And it's awkward in many ways because you can volunteer

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Speaker 1: to go there. You can go up to the gates

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Speaker 1: of the narcotic Farm and say, I'm a drug addict.

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Speaker 1: I have papers from my doctor. And before the World

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Speaker 1: War Two, most of the people who went to the

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Speaker 1: narcotic farm, so a third of them are volunteering in

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Speaker 1: that manner where they're just showing up seeking treatment and

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Speaker 1: getting it um largely for free. If they could pay,

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Speaker 1: they were asked to pay. But it was a place

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Speaker 1: where you might go if you were a drug user

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Speaker 1: and you know, the snow is starting to fly in

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Speaker 1: New York City and you don't really have a place

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Speaker 1: to live. What we would call today a homeless or

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Speaker 1: unhoused population often spent their winters at the narcotic Farm.

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Speaker 1: But but I mean, you can think about it quite

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Speaker 1: remarkable because here we have a place that's a prison,

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Speaker 1: yet basically a third of the inmates are people who

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Speaker 1: come knocked me at the door and say let me in.

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Speaker 1: I mean, there are no other prisons that I'm aware

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Speaker 1: of like that, right, And actually the other prisons right,

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Speaker 1: Most of the people who went to Lexington had been

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Speaker 1: incarcerated in prisons and jails and other places that were

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Speaker 1: not devoted to UH curing the drug addict. And so

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Speaker 1: they thought of Lexington the Narcotic Farm as a country club,

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Speaker 1: and in fact it became known very much as a

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Speaker 1: country club prison there. It is in the South, but

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Speaker 1: it's not racially segregated, and it's not gender segregated after nine.

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Speaker 1: So it's a strange institution. It's awkward in every way.

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Speaker 1: So for the entire forty years that the Narcotic Farm

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Speaker 1: operated UH ten at any given time. This is true

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Speaker 1: of men as well as women. Were professionals, largely positions,

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Speaker 1: largely people who had access to opiates or put their

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Speaker 1: wives on them. And so you have a nurses and

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Speaker 1: you know many many professionals who had greater access to

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Speaker 1: opioids became habituated to them and ended up going to

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Speaker 1: the narcotic Farm. UM. So it was a bizarre institution

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Speaker 1: when you really think about it because it is so mixed.

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Speaker 1: So in talking about the general population and we're talking

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Speaker 1: about you know, they treated over a hundred thousand people

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Speaker 1: in the time that they were operating. But you you

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Speaker 1: really do see a kind of change in the pattern

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Speaker 1: of who goes to the narcotic farm that reflects the

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Speaker 1: changes in the pattern of who uses opioids. We'll be

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Speaker 1: talking more after we hear this add you said it

302
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Speaker 1: was regarded as something of a country club prisoner. They

303
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Speaker 1: had all sorts of recreational facilities. They had all sorts

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Speaker 1: of you know, nice ways of treating people, whether people

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00:19:23,200 --> 00:19:26,720
Speaker 1: got manicures and haircuts, there were social events, but you

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Speaker 1: had gymnasiums, you had a golf course. I think you

307
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Speaker 1: had a tennis court. Yeah, it's it's pretty interesting when

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Speaker 1: when we looked at it um and I think Luke

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Speaker 1: Walden and JP Olsen and I as we were trying

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Speaker 1: to interpret these photographs that we were seeing in the

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Speaker 1: archives and that we were trying to understand. Right, you

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Speaker 1: see all kinds of recreational There was a bowling alley.

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Speaker 1: They're bowling alleys in the narcotic farm. There's the second

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Speaker 1: largest auditorium in the entire state of Kentucky for jazz concerts.

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Speaker 1: And I'm sure there was some resent s mint, but

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Speaker 1: it really looks like an American small town. You can

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Speaker 1: see the mentality, right, it's kind of a city on

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Speaker 1: a hill. This rolling hills of Kentucky, bluegrass. This is

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Speaker 1: thoroughbred country, right, And they are farming. Everyone is, you know,

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Speaker 1: they're they're harvesting vegetables, they're cutting the hay, they raise

321
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Speaker 1: the pork. Products that are consumed at that facility are

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Speaker 1: raised at that facility. They have all kinds of activities

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Speaker 1: and they log the amount of time that UM their

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Speaker 1: patient inmates spend at recreation, right, so they thousands of

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Speaker 1: hours each year are recorded of people who are bowling

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Speaker 1: or playing ping pong, or UM playing softball. There's a

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Speaker 1: women's softball team, there's you know, there's there's there's every

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Speaker 1: kind of recreation that they could a mad and how

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Speaker 1: to fit in there. And that's because they are convinced

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Speaker 1: very early on that UM, if people had better things

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Speaker 1: to do with their time, they wouldn't use drugs. So

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Speaker 1: the idea there is you find alternative reinforcers, activities that

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Speaker 1: compel people, that make people feel part of something larger

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Speaker 1: a community, whether it's basket weaving or whether it's um.

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Speaker 1: You know, they had these outdoor concerts in the middle

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Speaker 1: of the courtyard, and you know, they really tried to

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Speaker 1: make sure that people were busy all the time. They

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Speaker 1: had jobs. Everybody had a job, so you had to

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Speaker 1: work and you had to play, and you had to sleep,

340
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Speaker 1: and you had to eat. And that normalization project, and

341
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Speaker 1: it really was it was like, we're going to take

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Speaker 1: this institution and we're going to make an American small town,

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Speaker 1: and we are going to um indicate to people how

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Speaker 1: they could fit into that small town. You know. So

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Speaker 1: it's a very interesting model and it's one that we

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Speaker 1: to this day right have this idea that if we

347
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Speaker 1: could provide alternative reinforcers, then people wouldn't use drugs and

348
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Speaker 1: they wouldn't go back to using drugs. That turned out

349
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Speaker 1: not to work. It turns out that the recidivism rates

350
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Speaker 1: are off the charts. So it seems so that within

351
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Speaker 1: the Arconic farm, does is it creates this place for

352
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Speaker 1: people to chill out, gain some skills. Nobody's overdosing or

353
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Speaker 1: dying there, right, And in fact, one of the elements

354
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Speaker 1: I'm curious about is what was if two thirds of

355
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Speaker 1: the people there have been sentenced under the federal drug laws,

356
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Speaker 1: but one third are people who have showed up voluntarily,

357
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Speaker 1: what was the dynamic like between the ones who are

358
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Speaker 1: there voluntarily and the ones who were not. Yeah, there

359
00:22:47,880 --> 00:22:51,960
Speaker 1: was very little differentiation between We call them the balls,

360
00:22:52,560 --> 00:22:56,440
Speaker 1: and many of the balls will repeat customers um. In fact,

361
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Speaker 1: they were called winders because they would wind in and

362
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Speaker 1: wind doubt and then they would wind back. The one

363
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Speaker 1: that we found who was there the most was there

364
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Speaker 1: forty four times and on his forty fifth time. After

365
00:23:08,160 --> 00:23:12,440
Speaker 1: that he didn't didn't return. But many people were there,

366
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Speaker 1: maybe nine ten. I mean, we know to this day

367
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Speaker 1: right that that treatment often doesn't work the first time,

368
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Speaker 1: and that people do have to try multiple modalities. And

369
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Speaker 1: one of the things that they tried to do with

370
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Speaker 1: the narcotic Farm was they tried to provide under one

371
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Speaker 1: roof UM multiple modalities of treatment. So they tried a

372
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Speaker 1: lot of different things. The other thing that they really believed,

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Speaker 1: in addition to the alternative reinforcers I either play the

374
00:23:41,000 --> 00:23:45,639
Speaker 1: recreational opportunities UM. Everyone had a job and were they

375
00:23:45,680 --> 00:23:48,879
Speaker 1: were trained for these jobs, and these jobs ranged from

376
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Speaker 1: auto mechanics two woodworking to working of course in the

377
00:23:53,760 --> 00:23:56,880
Speaker 1: cooking um and clean up in the kitchen. But they

378
00:23:56,960 --> 00:24:02,200
Speaker 1: also included skills training, so for instance, photography and dark

379
00:24:02,359 --> 00:24:06,879
Speaker 1: room work or printing or other kinds of highly skilled

380
00:24:06,920 --> 00:24:10,480
Speaker 1: activities where you really could imagine people getting jobs afterwards.

381
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Speaker 1: Were sewing, tailoring, various kinds of things of this kind,

382
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Speaker 1: and these were at that time in these were progressive

383
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Speaker 1: elements of prison reform. The Federal Eureau of Prisons came

384
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Speaker 1: into being in nineteen thirty and it came into um

385
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Speaker 1: being at a time when people were really thinking about, um,

386
00:24:31,840 --> 00:24:36,360
Speaker 1: is it possible to make people who are incarcerated gain

387
00:24:36,480 --> 00:24:39,680
Speaker 1: new skills or take on new responsibilities. And with that,

388
00:24:39,880 --> 00:24:43,200
Speaker 1: in fact, UM you know, helped them in their lives

389
00:24:43,280 --> 00:24:46,840
Speaker 1: after they left these institutions. And so that vocational training,

390
00:24:46,960 --> 00:24:51,760
Speaker 1: vocational skills. Aspect of the narcotic farm UM which included

391
00:24:51,760 --> 00:24:56,359
Speaker 1: agricultural labor, they had cows, and so there are lots

392
00:24:56,400 --> 00:24:59,560
Speaker 1: and lots of stories about these city boys UM finding

393
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Speaker 1: themselves out milking cows early in the morning and splashing

394
00:25:03,200 --> 00:25:06,159
Speaker 1: around in the manure. Right hard hard to see how

395
00:25:06,240 --> 00:25:07,879
Speaker 1: learning how to milk a cow isn't help you when

396
00:25:07,920 --> 00:25:10,280
Speaker 1: you go back to New York City after that. But

397
00:25:10,400 --> 00:25:12,800
Speaker 1: you know, you talked also in the book about how

398
00:25:12,920 --> 00:25:16,280
Speaker 1: after World War Two there's a change in the attic population.

399
00:25:16,400 --> 00:25:19,359
Speaker 1: It's less about older guys, and now you have the

400
00:25:19,440 --> 00:25:23,240
Speaker 1: first youth heroin epidemic, and you have the children of immigrants,

401
00:25:23,320 --> 00:25:25,200
Speaker 1: you know, Italian and Jewish and Irish, and you have

402
00:25:25,240 --> 00:25:28,399
Speaker 1: Puerto Ricans and and Blacks. And that results in the

403
00:25:28,560 --> 00:25:32,639
Speaker 1: fifties in Congress enacting really incredibly draconian laws. And we

404
00:25:32,800 --> 00:25:35,880
Speaker 1: sometimes think about the laws today, but in nineteen fifties six,

405
00:25:36,000 --> 00:25:39,000
Speaker 1: in Narcotic Act that Congress passes after you know, one

406
00:25:39,040 --> 00:25:41,600
Speaker 1: of the more more recent drug scares back then, has

407
00:25:41,640 --> 00:25:44,840
Speaker 1: a five year minimum sentence for first time possession and

408
00:25:44,920 --> 00:25:48,639
Speaker 1: a death penalty for dealers. So how does all this

409
00:25:48,880 --> 00:25:52,560
Speaker 1: effect what's going on at the narcotic Farm. Yeah, so

410
00:25:52,680 --> 00:25:56,800
Speaker 1: it's pretty interesting because the hearing that got me interested

411
00:25:56,840 --> 00:25:59,840
Speaker 1: in the narcotic Farm was part of the lead up

412
00:26:00,000 --> 00:26:02,679
Speaker 1: to that nineteen fifty six Act, and the people at

413
00:26:02,680 --> 00:26:07,920
Speaker 1: the Narcotic Farm opposed the ninety Act, and that was

414
00:26:08,000 --> 00:26:12,800
Speaker 1: partly because there were mandatory minimum sentences that were leveled

415
00:26:12,840 --> 00:26:15,760
Speaker 1: initially in nineteen fifty one in the Bogs Act, and

416
00:26:15,880 --> 00:26:19,680
Speaker 1: that was very much responsive to concerns about juvenile delinquency.

417
00:26:20,200 --> 00:26:24,800
Speaker 1: These populations of largely young men, but young women as well,

418
00:26:25,080 --> 00:26:27,920
Speaker 1: and I write about that in some of my other work.

419
00:26:28,240 --> 00:26:30,080
Speaker 1: There was a famous study called the Road to H.

420
00:26:31,200 --> 00:26:34,280
Speaker 1: H was the slang term for heroin at the time.

421
00:26:34,359 --> 00:26:37,560
Speaker 1: So the Road to H was done at New York

422
00:26:37,720 --> 00:26:43,120
Speaker 1: University and it um looks at this population and what's

423
00:26:43,160 --> 00:26:49,200
Speaker 1: happening is that this younger, more racialized, more ethnicized population

424
00:26:49,480 --> 00:26:52,680
Speaker 1: is starting to show up at the narcotic farm right

425
00:26:52,760 --> 00:26:57,200
Speaker 1: around nineteen fifty one. So during the World War two,

426
00:26:57,920 --> 00:27:02,840
Speaker 1: UM you've probably all heard at opioids were stockpiled. They

427
00:27:02,880 --> 00:27:05,520
Speaker 1: were not just stockpiled at Fort Knox, although they were

428
00:27:05,560 --> 00:27:09,520
Speaker 1: stockpiled there, but at stockpiles around the country for UM

429
00:27:09,880 --> 00:27:13,240
Speaker 1: efforts during the war. One of the major purchasers of

430
00:27:13,359 --> 00:27:18,960
Speaker 1: opioids is actually the US military, major users because UM codeine,

431
00:27:19,359 --> 00:27:25,440
Speaker 1: cough suppression, other uses of morphine. Also, of course, during wartime,

432
00:27:25,520 --> 00:27:28,800
Speaker 1: you need more morphine to be available for people who

433
00:27:28,840 --> 00:27:33,639
Speaker 1: are injured UM in in the war. So you have Korea,

434
00:27:34,040 --> 00:27:37,120
Speaker 1: you have lots of people who begin to get UM

435
00:27:37,400 --> 00:27:41,080
Speaker 1: experience with the opioids, and you have after World War

436
00:27:41,200 --> 00:27:44,520
Speaker 1: Two a kind of flushing out of those stockpiles, so

437
00:27:44,680 --> 00:27:47,399
Speaker 1: that suddenly you find heroin in the streets again. You

438
00:27:47,600 --> 00:27:52,359
Speaker 1: also have the nineteen forty on you have the US

439
00:27:52,480 --> 00:27:56,080
Speaker 1: Mexico border. UM, A lot of opioids are coming into

440
00:27:56,119 --> 00:28:00,480
Speaker 1: the country either well through through Mexico. Were guardless of

441
00:28:00,560 --> 00:28:03,640
Speaker 1: whether they are UM produced in Mexico or whether they're

442
00:28:03,680 --> 00:28:08,080
Speaker 1: produced in UM through the Asian routes, they're coming in

443
00:28:08,440 --> 00:28:11,200
Speaker 1: that way. And then you also have of course other

444
00:28:11,320 --> 00:28:14,800
Speaker 1: routes coming in from to the east coast. The Daniel

445
00:28:14,840 --> 00:28:19,879
Speaker 1: hearings that led to that nineteen s act were about

446
00:28:19,920 --> 00:28:23,560
Speaker 1: the border. And so you see, the nineteen fifties is

447
00:28:23,600 --> 00:28:28,359
Speaker 1: a period of increasing criminalization, increasing buy in. So even

448
00:28:28,480 --> 00:28:34,280
Speaker 1: though UM many people the doctor's lawyers, you know, people

449
00:28:34,359 --> 00:28:38,920
Speaker 1: who had experience with UH drug addiction, like social workers,

450
00:28:39,680 --> 00:28:44,440
Speaker 1: argued against criminalization, UH, they lost. They lost that fight.

451
00:28:44,840 --> 00:28:47,200
Speaker 1: So in fact, in the nineteen fifties, this is back

452
00:28:47,240 --> 00:28:51,080
Speaker 1: to my dissertation topic, UM, there was a wonderful American

453
00:28:51,160 --> 00:28:56,320
Speaker 1: Medical Association American Bar Association effort called drug addiction crime

454
00:28:56,560 --> 00:29:01,320
Speaker 1: or Disease, and there were a significant opponent of people

455
00:29:01,720 --> 00:29:05,120
Speaker 1: who were saying, this is a disease and it should

456
00:29:05,160 --> 00:29:07,720
Speaker 1: be treated as a disease. And of course that fit

457
00:29:07,920 --> 00:29:10,320
Speaker 1: very well with the narcotic farm because they had always

458
00:29:10,360 --> 00:29:12,880
Speaker 1: seen it as a disease and they in fact talked

459
00:29:12,920 --> 00:29:17,080
Speaker 1: about it as a chronic relapsing condition. And the fifties

460
00:29:17,200 --> 00:29:21,200
Speaker 1: is so interesting. It's so interesting because you have a

461
00:29:21,400 --> 00:29:27,800
Speaker 1: culture Heroin using jazz culture. I can't I can't kind

462
00:29:27,880 --> 00:29:34,040
Speaker 1: of convey how important Heroin was to the jazz culture.

463
00:29:34,480 --> 00:29:37,480
Speaker 1: Um In ninety seven, a guy named Charles Winnick in

464
00:29:37,520 --> 00:29:41,440
Speaker 1: New York City interviewed three hundred and fifty seven Heroin

465
00:29:41,640 --> 00:29:46,160
Speaker 1: using jazz musicians. So this was definitely you know, I

466
00:29:46,240 --> 00:29:50,280
Speaker 1: mean like that that's a very specialized population and to

467
00:29:50,400 --> 00:29:52,640
Speaker 1: be able to find three hundred and fifty seven of

468
00:29:52,720 --> 00:29:55,680
Speaker 1: them for your study is kind of surprising. But in

469
00:29:55,800 --> 00:30:00,440
Speaker 1: many ways, Lexington became this kind of mecca of this

470
00:30:00,680 --> 00:30:05,400
Speaker 1: cultural center really for this population, and the nineteen fifties

471
00:30:05,600 --> 00:30:09,240
Speaker 1: was it's heyday. And so across the nineteen fifties you

472
00:30:09,360 --> 00:30:13,280
Speaker 1: begin to see a huge population shift really as a

473
00:30:13,320 --> 00:30:17,160
Speaker 1: narcotic farm, so you have many more let's just focus

474
00:30:17,240 --> 00:30:19,560
Speaker 1: on this jas saying because I'll tell you that for

475
00:30:19,640 --> 00:30:21,800
Speaker 1: a long time. I mean, if if somebody mentioned the

476
00:30:21,880 --> 00:30:24,920
Speaker 1: Narcotic Farm to me twenty years ago, the first thing

477
00:30:25,000 --> 00:30:26,720
Speaker 1: that I would think of, Oh yeah, that was the

478
00:30:26,880 --> 00:30:29,760
Speaker 1: federal narcotic prison where you had all the jazz, famous

479
00:30:29,840 --> 00:30:32,200
Speaker 1: jazz players, and I mean, just for our listeners, if

480
00:30:32,200 --> 00:30:35,120
Speaker 1: you know anything about jazz, it had Check Baker was there,

481
00:30:35,480 --> 00:30:39,120
Speaker 1: Sonny Rollins, who's still playing and is widely regarded as

482
00:30:39,160 --> 00:30:41,640
Speaker 1: maybe second only to John Coltrane, is the greatest of

483
00:30:41,720 --> 00:30:46,280
Speaker 1: all saxophonists. Had Elvin Jones, Jackie McLean, Sonny State who

484
00:30:46,320 --> 00:30:48,040
Speaker 1: I used to go see in the Upper West Side

485
00:30:48,120 --> 00:30:50,880
Speaker 1: years ago, Joe Guy. So I mean, it really was

486
00:30:50,960 --> 00:30:54,040
Speaker 1: an exceptional story. And then I think this is incident

487
00:30:54,160 --> 00:30:57,360
Speaker 1: that you mentioned the book in nineteen sixty four. We're

488
00:30:57,400 --> 00:31:00,760
Speaker 1: an orchestra made up of the jazz as players who

489
00:31:00,760 --> 00:31:05,479
Speaker 1: are at Lexington performed on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. Now

490
00:31:05,560 --> 00:31:08,280
Speaker 1: unfortunately the tapes no longer exist, but I mean, I

491
00:31:08,320 --> 00:31:11,240
Speaker 1: guess it was described as the greatest band you've never heard,

492
00:31:11,880 --> 00:31:14,280
Speaker 1: So I mean, probably no other federal prison can claim

493
00:31:14,400 --> 00:31:17,520
Speaker 1: that sort of link with great, you know, great artists.

494
00:31:17,520 --> 00:31:22,000
Speaker 1: In America, Well, no other prison except perhaps Fort Worth,

495
00:31:22,520 --> 00:31:26,440
Speaker 1: so the Fort Worth Narcotic Farm. They also had jazz

496
00:31:26,520 --> 00:31:29,120
Speaker 1: greats and also celebrities. So that was the other thing

497
00:31:29,120 --> 00:31:32,640
Speaker 1: about Lexington is that there was a celebrity culture UM.

498
00:31:32,760 --> 00:31:35,600
Speaker 1: And so you might have actors, people you you would know,

499
00:31:35,840 --> 00:31:39,680
Speaker 1: and the whole population would get very excited about oh,

500
00:31:39,840 --> 00:31:43,680
Speaker 1: somebody's being admitted. UM. And you could also go here

501
00:31:43,760 --> 00:31:47,880
Speaker 1: those concerts. They had practice rooms. They also bought musical

502
00:31:48,040 --> 00:31:52,400
Speaker 1: instruments for the patient inmates, so a lot of people

503
00:31:52,440 --> 00:31:56,760
Speaker 1: who never played together outside would play together at Lexington UM.

504
00:31:56,920 --> 00:31:59,160
Speaker 1: And there were a lot of jazz fans, right, There

505
00:31:59,200 --> 00:32:01,280
Speaker 1: were a lot of people who went to jazz clubs

506
00:32:01,440 --> 00:32:07,800
Speaker 1: who also used heroine and who um had this lifestyle. UM.

507
00:32:08,080 --> 00:32:11,040
Speaker 1: That kind of became part of the place to the

508
00:32:11,160 --> 00:32:17,440
Speaker 1: point where many many people remember the music above everything

509
00:32:17,520 --> 00:32:21,600
Speaker 1: else about Lexington. Well, that was certainly my case until

510
00:32:21,640 --> 00:32:24,640
Speaker 1: I read your book. You know. So what happens is

511
00:32:24,680 --> 00:32:28,080
Speaker 1: from the thirties and through into the fifties and early sixties,

512
00:32:28,520 --> 00:32:31,760
Speaker 1: there's still the basic model, which is engaged people in

513
00:32:31,880 --> 00:32:35,240
Speaker 1: agricultural work and have them fresh hair and have tremendous

514
00:32:35,280 --> 00:32:39,360
Speaker 1: recreational facilities and vocational training and hope that all of

515
00:32:39,400 --> 00:32:42,520
Speaker 1: this stuff works out that people won't recidivate, which turns

516
00:32:42,560 --> 00:32:45,200
Speaker 1: out to be false. Although you know, as we also

517
00:32:45,240 --> 00:32:47,120
Speaker 1: know with drug addiction, that even when most of the

518
00:32:47,480 --> 00:32:49,800
Speaker 1: people who volunteered to go to the Narcotic Farm, they

519
00:32:49,840 --> 00:32:52,240
Speaker 1: weren't exactly looking to get clean to get off drugs.

520
00:32:52,280 --> 00:32:54,200
Speaker 1: They were mostly looking to kind of chill out for

521
00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:55,800
Speaker 1: a while when they were burning out on the life

522
00:32:55,800 --> 00:32:58,480
Speaker 1: on the streets. So it did add some value in

523
00:32:58,560 --> 00:33:01,000
Speaker 1: that sense. But then there's a moment, I think in

524
00:33:01,080 --> 00:33:04,840
Speaker 1: the sixties where people begin to give up on the

525
00:33:04,960 --> 00:33:09,840
Speaker 1: whole agriculture as treatment modeled, and where the Narcotic Farm

526
00:33:09,960 --> 00:33:14,040
Speaker 1: shifts and it begins to embrace some of these therapeutic

527
00:33:14,160 --> 00:33:18,280
Speaker 1: community approaches that were happening outside. And maybe there's some

528
00:33:18,360 --> 00:33:21,160
Speaker 1: things that are initially ground in alcoholics anonymous programs like

529
00:33:21,520 --> 00:33:24,480
Speaker 1: day Top and the one Synanon which became quite notorious.

530
00:33:24,640 --> 00:33:27,280
Speaker 1: But say a little more about that transition that happens

531
00:33:27,320 --> 00:33:29,800
Speaker 1: in the sixties in the last ten years of the

532
00:33:29,920 --> 00:33:35,280
Speaker 1: life of the Narcotic Farm. Yeah, so the food at Lexington,

533
00:33:35,880 --> 00:33:40,960
Speaker 1: like the music was legendary, so people actually liked the food.

534
00:33:41,320 --> 00:33:44,560
Speaker 1: It was good food, and it was grown there. It

535
00:33:44,680 --> 00:33:48,240
Speaker 1: was fresh um. It was not like other institutional food.

536
00:33:48,800 --> 00:33:52,200
Speaker 1: And this was kind of well well known, well documented.

537
00:33:52,560 --> 00:33:55,600
Speaker 1: And then in the nineties sixties there begins to be

538
00:33:56,400 --> 00:34:00,240
Speaker 1: prison reform that says you can't make people work, and

539
00:34:00,520 --> 00:34:03,600
Speaker 1: so you can't make people work in the same way,

540
00:34:03,760 --> 00:34:07,080
Speaker 1: which means you can't really run an agricultural enterprise. Because

541
00:34:07,160 --> 00:34:11,239
Speaker 1: the agricultural enterprise, although it was headed by um, a

542
00:34:11,360 --> 00:34:15,280
Speaker 1: staff member, it was really entirely patient in my labor.

543
00:34:15,640 --> 00:34:18,320
Speaker 1: This was also true in the kitchen. And so what

544
00:34:18,640 --> 00:34:22,160
Speaker 1: happens is there begin to be shifts in the nineteen sixties,

545
00:34:22,560 --> 00:34:26,759
Speaker 1: partly as a result of that changing pattern of race

546
00:34:26,880 --> 00:34:30,600
Speaker 1: and ethnicity that began in the nine fifties, and there's

547
00:34:30,640 --> 00:34:36,279
Speaker 1: also federal prison reform that changes things. In addition, there's

548
00:34:36,320 --> 00:34:41,320
Speaker 1: a shift away from psychotherapy individual or group uh that

549
00:34:41,800 --> 00:34:46,040
Speaker 1: had been in its heyday in the fifties, towards these

550
00:34:46,480 --> 00:34:52,200
Speaker 1: more affordable kind of alcoholics anonymous style, narcotics, anonymous style

551
00:34:52,640 --> 00:34:55,879
Speaker 1: and counter groups and things like that that make more

552
00:34:56,000 --> 00:35:00,080
Speaker 1: sense with a large population than individual psychotherapy. That's be

553
00:35:00,120 --> 00:35:04,920
Speaker 1: difficult to achieve, and nobody really embraced it um in

554
00:35:05,000 --> 00:35:08,279
Speaker 1: the patient inmate population, because most people, as you said,

555
00:35:08,360 --> 00:35:11,960
Speaker 1: weren't going there to get off drugs. They were going

556
00:35:12,040 --> 00:35:15,120
Speaker 1: there to reduce the cost of their habit There were also,

557
00:35:15,280 --> 00:35:19,680
Speaker 1: i would say hardening attitudes among the staff um, partly

558
00:35:19,800 --> 00:35:24,719
Speaker 1: because the idealism of the early days didn't outlast the

559
00:35:24,800 --> 00:35:30,719
Speaker 1: post war wave that idealism. People begin to see right

560
00:35:30,800 --> 00:35:32,759
Speaker 1: that people are coming back, that it's kind of a

561
00:35:32,880 --> 00:35:37,800
Speaker 1: revolving door, and everyone who's kind of in charge begins

562
00:35:37,880 --> 00:35:42,719
Speaker 1: to realize that we are not having the impact or

563
00:35:42,800 --> 00:35:45,600
Speaker 1: effect that we wish we would had. And actually, even

564
00:35:45,719 --> 00:35:49,479
Speaker 1: from the nineteen forties, there were concerns about after care.

565
00:35:50,080 --> 00:35:53,160
Speaker 1: The people who ran the narcotic farm believed that there

566
00:35:53,200 --> 00:35:56,359
Speaker 1: should be after care, that there should be follow up,

567
00:35:56,600 --> 00:35:59,360
Speaker 1: that people shouldn't just like leave the institution and just

568
00:35:59,560 --> 00:36:02,680
Speaker 1: go back to their neighborhoods. There began to be, in fact,

569
00:36:02,760 --> 00:36:07,840
Speaker 1: a scientific um investigation of relapse. What was it and

570
00:36:08,000 --> 00:36:10,760
Speaker 1: why was it that people could be on the train

571
00:36:11,160 --> 00:36:13,920
Speaker 1: or the bus back to their neighborhoods where they had

572
00:36:14,040 --> 00:36:16,319
Speaker 1: used and they would feel like they were going into

573
00:36:16,400 --> 00:36:18,880
Speaker 1: withdrawal again, even if they had been cleaned for months,

574
00:36:19,440 --> 00:36:22,640
Speaker 1: And so what was that phenomenon. They begin to kind

575
00:36:22,680 --> 00:36:25,839
Speaker 1: of get really curious about that. Now. The therapeutic communities

576
00:36:26,360 --> 00:36:29,879
Speaker 1: are actually many of them started by people who were

577
00:36:30,040 --> 00:36:33,640
Speaker 1: at the narcotic farm and then left the narcotic farm

578
00:36:34,000 --> 00:36:38,040
Speaker 1: were critical of the model of abstinence only and they

579
00:36:38,160 --> 00:36:43,200
Speaker 1: basically said, this needs to be a much more confrontational

580
00:36:43,640 --> 00:36:48,359
Speaker 1: version of abstinence only. So therapeutic communities or tcs UH

581
00:36:48,480 --> 00:36:51,800
Speaker 1: sent and On being the largest and most notorious, and

582
00:36:51,880 --> 00:36:56,279
Speaker 1: day Top Village following on were much more you know

583
00:36:56,360 --> 00:36:59,319
Speaker 1: that their therapies were things like the hot seat where

584
00:36:59,480 --> 00:37:02,160
Speaker 1: you had just sit there and just take or or

585
00:37:02,320 --> 00:37:05,800
Speaker 1: dunce caps. So they really used humiliation and what I

586
00:37:05,840 --> 00:37:10,040
Speaker 1: would call coercion UH to get people to stop using drugs.

587
00:37:10,080 --> 00:37:13,400
Speaker 1: And they used the power of a community, a larger

588
00:37:13,440 --> 00:37:16,360
Speaker 1: group of people to try to keep people. You know,

589
00:37:16,440 --> 00:37:21,000
Speaker 1: they would have them do very menial work, unpaid, you know, toothbrushing,

590
00:37:21,600 --> 00:37:25,640
Speaker 1: the grout in the showers or on the stairways. Very

591
00:37:25,760 --> 00:37:29,880
Speaker 1: humiliating things were done in the that movement, and that

592
00:37:30,320 --> 00:37:34,480
Speaker 1: was even tried. The administrators at Lexington gave over a

593
00:37:35,040 --> 00:37:38,319
Speaker 1: building where the women used to be housed. They were

594
00:37:38,400 --> 00:37:41,080
Speaker 1: now housed in the main part of the facility. In

595
00:37:41,120 --> 00:37:44,320
Speaker 1: a separate wing, they gave over a building to a

596
00:37:44,680 --> 00:37:49,080
Speaker 1: therapeutic community called Matrix House. To see, right, if they

597
00:37:49,160 --> 00:37:53,919
Speaker 1: could perhaps um be more successful in terms of more

598
00:37:54,000 --> 00:37:59,640
Speaker 1: effective at treatment, um if they used these more confrontational techniques.

599
00:38:02,239 --> 00:38:04,040
Speaker 1: Let's take a break here and go to an ad

600
00:38:18,200 --> 00:38:22,920
Speaker 1: purely by coincidence, this past weekend, I was hanging out

601
00:38:23,000 --> 00:38:26,400
Speaker 1: with a friend of mine, Howard Josepher, at his summer

602
00:38:26,480 --> 00:38:29,759
Speaker 1: home on Fire Island in New York. And Howard is

603
00:38:29,840 --> 00:38:33,000
Speaker 1: somebody who was one of the founders of Phoenix House,

604
00:38:33,120 --> 00:38:35,680
Speaker 1: and then he started a remarkable harm reduction program in

605
00:38:35,719 --> 00:38:39,840
Speaker 1: New York called Exponents. But he back in the sixties

606
00:38:40,000 --> 00:38:42,759
Speaker 1: landed up at Lexington And I asked him what did

607
00:38:42,800 --> 00:38:45,320
Speaker 1: he remember about being at Lexington in the mid sixties,

608
00:38:45,560 --> 00:38:50,360
Speaker 1: And what he remembered was those confrontational therapeutic sorts of programs.

609
00:38:50,600 --> 00:38:52,359
Speaker 1: You know, he was among the number of people whom

610
00:38:52,400 --> 00:38:54,520
Speaker 1: that who sort of was drawn to that model at

611
00:38:54,600 --> 00:38:58,560
Speaker 1: least initially about challenging people. But his one recollection was

612
00:38:58,800 --> 00:39:03,759
Speaker 1: that confrontation know, you know, therapeutic programs at Lexington at

613
00:39:03,800 --> 00:39:07,040
Speaker 1: that time. It's such an interesting paradox isn't it. So

614
00:39:07,440 --> 00:39:10,239
Speaker 1: one of the things about the narcotic farm is that

615
00:39:10,400 --> 00:39:16,680
Speaker 1: they would give wings two therapeutic communities, often configured around

616
00:39:17,400 --> 00:39:21,640
Speaker 1: racial or ethnic identity, and they would allow them to

617
00:39:22,280 --> 00:39:26,080
Speaker 1: choose their name Newman House or Unity spelled with a

618
00:39:26,360 --> 00:39:30,359
Speaker 1: y o u uh, and both men and women uh

619
00:39:30,640 --> 00:39:36,279
Speaker 1: could try to do this kind of thing within the institution.

620
00:39:36,360 --> 00:39:39,359
Speaker 1: In the nineteen sixties and seventies, Actually, in the late

621
00:39:39,480 --> 00:39:43,080
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties there were really big changes in the federal

622
00:39:43,160 --> 00:39:46,600
Speaker 1: prison system, and there were big changes in nineteen sixty

623
00:39:46,680 --> 00:39:51,120
Speaker 1: six that affected the institution in ways that allowed for

624
00:39:51,600 --> 00:39:53,960
Speaker 1: more of this sort of thing. In nineteen sixty six,

625
00:39:54,320 --> 00:39:59,520
Speaker 1: the Narcotic Addict Rehabilitation Act was passed and NARA, it

626
00:39:59,680 --> 00:40:04,200
Speaker 1: was called the Narcotic Addict Rehabilitation Act, was a federal

627
00:40:04,400 --> 00:40:10,000
Speaker 1: act that essentially changed the way treatment was done. So

628
00:40:10,080 --> 00:40:13,120
Speaker 1: if you think about what is a treatment infrastructure, well,

629
00:40:13,560 --> 00:40:18,760
Speaker 1: for from until nineteen sixty six, it's these two massive

630
00:40:19,080 --> 00:40:24,320
Speaker 1: narcotic farms. It's centralized, it's federal, it's one east of

631
00:40:24,360 --> 00:40:27,480
Speaker 1: the Mississippi and one west of the Mississippi River. And

632
00:40:28,239 --> 00:40:33,560
Speaker 1: after nineteen sixty six, that legislation essentially says you have

633
00:40:33,800 --> 00:40:39,760
Speaker 1: to get treatment in your home community. So every state,

634
00:40:40,719 --> 00:40:45,759
Speaker 1: every town, every city is supposed to have drug treatment. Well,

635
00:40:46,520 --> 00:40:48,800
Speaker 1: how are you going to do that? Right? Maybe? Okay,

636
00:40:48,920 --> 00:40:54,279
Speaker 1: So you have federal contractors who set out to make

637
00:40:54,320 --> 00:40:58,600
Speaker 1: sure that everywhere that a person who is a drug

638
00:40:58,760 --> 00:41:03,520
Speaker 1: user comes from has drug treatment. And so treatment essentially

639
00:41:04,120 --> 00:41:07,719
Speaker 1: devolves to the states. Away from the federal They use

640
00:41:07,800 --> 00:41:11,440
Speaker 1: the narcotic farm essentially to uh, you go there for

641
00:41:11,560 --> 00:41:16,640
Speaker 1: six months only and then you are discharged to your

642
00:41:16,719 --> 00:41:21,160
Speaker 1: home community. And so that's why they're experimenting with these

643
00:41:21,280 --> 00:41:26,160
Speaker 1: other kinds of forms of treatment, because who is going

644
00:41:26,239 --> 00:41:28,880
Speaker 1: to provide all that treatment? Well, who comes forward is

645
00:41:28,920 --> 00:41:34,920
Speaker 1: the salvation army, these new therapeutic communities, right, Alcoholics anonymous,

646
00:41:35,120 --> 00:41:40,440
Speaker 1: narcotics anonymous UM. And they are provided federal money to

647
00:41:40,600 --> 00:41:45,360
Speaker 1: start up treatment in Philadelphia or in um, you know,

648
00:41:45,640 --> 00:41:48,920
Speaker 1: small towns in say Pennsylvania. Right, So you have a

649
00:41:49,080 --> 00:41:54,480
Speaker 1: decentralization of the whole treatment infrastructure to the states and

650
00:41:54,640 --> 00:41:58,160
Speaker 1: then to the cities where people who are having drug

651
00:41:58,280 --> 00:42:03,480
Speaker 1: problems are coming from. That changes everything at the narcotic farm. Now,

652
00:42:03,520 --> 00:42:06,120
Speaker 1: there's also something else emerging at that time, right, which

653
00:42:06,200 --> 00:42:10,320
Speaker 1: is that when people were initially admitted to Lexington or

654
00:42:10,360 --> 00:42:11,879
Speaker 1: four works, right, one of the first things that would

655
00:42:11,920 --> 00:42:14,880
Speaker 1: happen is they would be detoxed from their morphine or

656
00:42:14,880 --> 00:42:18,720
Speaker 1: heroin addiction, typically with I think, you know, declining doses

657
00:42:18,800 --> 00:42:22,400
Speaker 1: of morphine until they just stopped, and then after you know,

658
00:42:22,520 --> 00:42:25,839
Speaker 1: last I thought it was morphine tight, and then methodon after.

659
00:42:27,200 --> 00:42:31,399
Speaker 1: But what happens in the sixties is Vincent Dola Marine

660
00:42:31,520 --> 00:42:35,399
Speaker 1: Nice wandering their research suggesting that methodon should be used

661
00:42:35,520 --> 00:42:39,600
Speaker 1: not just for detox but for maintenance purposes. So you

662
00:42:39,760 --> 00:42:43,880
Speaker 1: have sort of simultaneous with the growth of the therapeutic

663
00:42:43,920 --> 00:42:48,720
Speaker 1: community model, also the beginnings of methodon maintenance programs beginning

664
00:42:48,760 --> 00:42:52,239
Speaker 1: to open up in communities around the country. Yeah, and

665
00:42:52,360 --> 00:42:56,120
Speaker 1: method on maintenance is, like all the old morphine maintenance

666
00:42:56,200 --> 00:43:01,760
Speaker 1: pretty contested, and it's very much contested by the Federal

667
00:43:01,840 --> 00:43:05,400
Speaker 1: Bureau of Narcotics Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs d

668
00:43:05,560 --> 00:43:10,800
Speaker 1: E a drug enforcement agency administration. So you have methodon

669
00:43:11,080 --> 00:43:15,480
Speaker 1: maintenance is a pilot program. It's experimental well into the

670
00:43:15,600 --> 00:43:22,240
Speaker 1: seventies um, and it is contained within a methodone clinic system.

671
00:43:22,680 --> 00:43:27,840
Speaker 1: It's not generalized to medicine more generally, and so methodon

672
00:43:27,960 --> 00:43:32,080
Speaker 1: maintenance is does become available in some of these destination

673
00:43:32,200 --> 00:43:36,560
Speaker 1: cities Detroit, New York certainly, so you see a rapid

674
00:43:36,640 --> 00:43:40,200
Speaker 1: scaling up of availability of methodone in certain places and

675
00:43:40,400 --> 00:43:44,400
Speaker 1: complete non availability in other places. The Narcotic Farm is

676
00:43:44,680 --> 00:43:49,320
Speaker 1: interesting in terms of they were anti maintenance in certain

677
00:43:49,360 --> 00:43:53,719
Speaker 1: ways because they felt that, um, you could overdose on methodone.

678
00:43:54,080 --> 00:43:58,560
Speaker 1: Methodone was very little different in their minds from morphine

679
00:43:58,640 --> 00:44:02,520
Speaker 1: or even heroin, and so they had fights actually with

680
00:44:02,680 --> 00:44:06,120
Speaker 1: Vincent Dole and Marie nice Wander. Nice Wander herself had

681
00:44:06,160 --> 00:44:08,279
Speaker 1: been at the Narcotic Farm. They had one of the

682
00:44:08,440 --> 00:44:12,319
Speaker 1: first psychiatric residency programs in the country at the Narcotic Farm,

683
00:44:12,640 --> 00:44:14,680
Speaker 1: and so she had been there and she had observed

684
00:44:14,880 --> 00:44:18,960
Speaker 1: and she did not feel very positive about the program

685
00:44:19,080 --> 00:44:22,800
Speaker 1: at Lexington. Vincent Dole had a very different theory of addiction.

686
00:44:22,920 --> 00:44:27,000
Speaker 1: He had a theory um that addiction was a metabolic disease,

687
00:44:27,480 --> 00:44:30,080
Speaker 1: and that was in some ways a very different kind

688
00:44:30,160 --> 00:44:34,480
Speaker 1: of theory than a theory of a neurochemical kind of

689
00:44:35,200 --> 00:44:38,160
Speaker 1: disease that the people at the Narcotic Farm were functioning with.

690
00:44:38,719 --> 00:44:42,320
Speaker 1: Between the Narcotic Addict Rehabilitation Act and METHODO maintenance. It

691
00:44:42,480 --> 00:44:45,680
Speaker 1: is very clear in the early seventies that the narcotic

692
00:44:45,760 --> 00:44:49,600
Speaker 1: farms are becoming what we might call white elephants, right.

693
00:44:49,719 --> 00:44:52,480
Speaker 1: They are out of step with the times. They are

694
00:44:53,000 --> 00:44:58,239
Speaker 1: carceerole environments, and it's evolving towards something really different as

695
00:44:58,280 --> 00:45:02,280
Speaker 1: a result of of the Narcotic adict Rehabilitation Act, because

696
00:45:02,360 --> 00:45:05,799
Speaker 1: the states are beginning to come on and say, all right,

697
00:45:06,040 --> 00:45:09,400
Speaker 1: let's see what works, and let's start up treatment in

698
00:45:09,480 --> 00:45:12,480
Speaker 1: our states and in our cities and in our towns.

699
00:45:12,840 --> 00:45:15,640
Speaker 1: That makes sense for the people who come from this area.

700
00:45:16,040 --> 00:45:19,000
Speaker 1: But let's turn now to the Addiction Research Center. It

701
00:45:19,120 --> 00:45:22,319
Speaker 1: became known as Addiction Research Center. I mean, my understanding

702
00:45:22,480 --> 00:45:26,240
Speaker 1: was you had leading researchers and scientists, They had already

703
00:45:26,320 --> 00:45:30,320
Speaker 1: made population of drug addicts who were right there, and

704
00:45:30,440 --> 00:45:35,520
Speaker 1: that for decades they conducted thousands of studies, published over

705
00:45:35,880 --> 00:45:39,680
Speaker 1: five articles and leading scientific journals. You know, really had

706
00:45:39,680 --> 00:45:42,640
Speaker 1: all sorts of sort of breakthroughs and understanding addictions. So

707
00:45:43,000 --> 00:45:45,920
Speaker 1: just tell us more about that Addiction Research Center and

708
00:45:46,080 --> 00:45:48,160
Speaker 1: what was so special about it and what it really

709
00:45:48,200 --> 00:45:51,120
Speaker 1: added to our broader knowledge historically about drug use and

710
00:45:51,200 --> 00:45:55,920
Speaker 1: drug addiction. Sure, um, the Addiction Research Center is the

711
00:45:56,040 --> 00:45:59,880
Speaker 1: name that was given to the laboratory that congress Man

712
00:46:00,120 --> 00:46:04,920
Speaker 1: dated UM be in the U. S. Narcotic Farm, you know,

713
00:46:05,040 --> 00:46:08,960
Speaker 1: back when the farm begins. UM, when it opens in

714
00:46:09,040 --> 00:46:15,360
Speaker 1: n U S. Congress has great faith that science is

715
00:46:15,440 --> 00:46:18,480
Speaker 1: going to be able to find a cure for drug addiction.

716
00:46:19,200 --> 00:46:23,200
Speaker 1: And they really believe that UM nine. They really believe

717
00:46:23,280 --> 00:46:26,320
Speaker 1: that they mandate that there be a scientific effort, and

718
00:46:26,440 --> 00:46:30,000
Speaker 1: that effort UM is going to begin actually before the

719
00:46:30,120 --> 00:46:33,680
Speaker 1: narcotic Farm opens. The person who's going to become the

720
00:46:33,840 --> 00:46:38,279
Speaker 1: director of that laboratory based effort, Clifton Himmel's block, is

721
00:46:38,360 --> 00:46:41,560
Speaker 1: doing research at Fort Leavenworth, which is the largest prison

722
00:46:41,600 --> 00:46:44,400
Speaker 1: in the country at that time, and he's doing research

723
00:46:44,520 --> 00:46:48,399
Speaker 1: on that population of people who are drug users who

724
00:46:48,440 --> 00:46:53,160
Speaker 1: find themselves in federal prison. And he's also doing research

725
00:46:53,480 --> 00:46:58,200
Speaker 1: at cancer hospitals, and he's trying to figure out what

726
00:46:58,520 --> 00:47:02,480
Speaker 1: is drug addiction scientifically? What is it? UM? How does

727
00:47:02,520 --> 00:47:06,520
Speaker 1: it work? UM? Why does it happen with opioids and

728
00:47:06,719 --> 00:47:10,399
Speaker 1: nothing else? Right? Why do these and he draws out

729
00:47:11,040 --> 00:47:14,000
Speaker 1: these UM charts and he finds out that this is

730
00:47:14,040 --> 00:47:18,799
Speaker 1: a very predictable situation. Right, you have a very predictable

731
00:47:18,920 --> 00:47:23,440
Speaker 1: lead up too tolerance, and then you have if you withdraw,

732
00:47:24,000 --> 00:47:27,719
Speaker 1: then a subject will go into withdrawal and there will

733
00:47:27,719 --> 00:47:32,560
Speaker 1: be a very predictable pattern of symptoms and of physiological

734
00:47:32,920 --> 00:47:38,279
Speaker 1: responses to that withdrawal. And so he invents this thing

735
00:47:38,400 --> 00:47:42,480
Speaker 1: called the morphine abstinence syndrome. You know what happens when

736
00:47:42,719 --> 00:47:46,160
Speaker 1: somebody is addicted and you take away that substance. What

737
00:47:46,320 --> 00:47:50,400
Speaker 1: do they do? And um, he begins to study it

738
00:47:50,480 --> 00:47:54,520
Speaker 1: in very small groups of people. Six is the usual

739
00:47:54,680 --> 00:47:59,640
Speaker 1: size from well into the post war period. You have

740
00:47:59,800 --> 00:48:05,320
Speaker 1: very small subject populations. And he believes subjects should know

741
00:48:05,440 --> 00:48:09,560
Speaker 1: what they're getting into, that they should sign consent forms,

742
00:48:10,239 --> 00:48:14,719
Speaker 1: and that um, they should understand, you know, what's going on.

743
00:48:14,880 --> 00:48:17,560
Speaker 1: And so he says, you can only do these studies

744
00:48:18,160 --> 00:48:23,520
Speaker 1: on people who are seasoned morphine or heroin users who

745
00:48:24,520 --> 00:48:27,880
Speaker 1: do not want to be cured. Right, So these are

746
00:48:27,960 --> 00:48:33,080
Speaker 1: people who say that they are never going to stop using,

747
00:48:33,520 --> 00:48:37,120
Speaker 1: that they will use, um, you know, as soon as

748
00:48:37,160 --> 00:48:40,520
Speaker 1: they get out of the institution. No one who hopes

749
00:48:40,600 --> 00:48:44,280
Speaker 1: for a cure is supposed to be accepted into these studies.

750
00:48:44,640 --> 00:48:47,799
Speaker 1: So the laboratory is a pretty interesting place because at

751
00:48:47,880 --> 00:48:51,520
Speaker 1: that time You have to imagine, we know nothing scientifically

752
00:48:52,160 --> 00:48:55,680
Speaker 1: about this condition, and we don't even know really what

753
00:48:55,920 --> 00:48:58,040
Speaker 1: kind of condition it is. We have to define it,

754
00:48:58,560 --> 00:49:02,160
Speaker 1: we have to chart it out, etcetera. And in addition

755
00:49:02,239 --> 00:49:08,359
Speaker 1: to that, our subjects no more about the condition. Then

756
00:49:08,400 --> 00:49:12,320
Speaker 1: the researchers do. They don't know anything about this condition.

757
00:49:12,600 --> 00:49:16,160
Speaker 1: Who knows? Drug users know and they are the experts

758
00:49:16,520 --> 00:49:21,480
Speaker 1: in this area, and so they talk to them. They

759
00:49:21,800 --> 00:49:26,160
Speaker 1: have a specific ward set aside that's called the research ward,

760
00:49:26,960 --> 00:49:30,640
Speaker 1: and um they stay in that ward during the time

761
00:49:30,719 --> 00:49:34,440
Speaker 1: that they're participating in these studies. They are never allowed

762
00:49:34,520 --> 00:49:38,160
Speaker 1: back in the general population when they are participating in

763
00:49:38,200 --> 00:49:43,479
Speaker 1: these studies. So from nineteen thirty five to nineteen sixty two,

764
00:49:44,280 --> 00:49:48,360
Speaker 1: there is no requirement in the US for clinical trials

765
00:49:48,800 --> 00:49:52,920
Speaker 1: prior to a drug going onto the market. But the

766
00:49:52,960 --> 00:49:56,480
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical companies who are putting these drugs on the market

767
00:49:57,040 --> 00:50:00,120
Speaker 1: do want human testing. They do want to know if

768
00:50:00,160 --> 00:50:04,120
Speaker 1: their drugs work, if they're dangerous, etcetera. And so what

769
00:50:04,280 --> 00:50:07,759
Speaker 1: they do is they evolve a system. This laboratory of

770
00:50:07,800 --> 00:50:11,400
Speaker 1: the Narcotic Farm works very closely with a committee of

771
00:50:11,480 --> 00:50:15,840
Speaker 1: the National Academies of Science and the National Research Council

772
00:50:16,239 --> 00:50:19,480
Speaker 1: because during that the war there was a lot of

773
00:50:19,960 --> 00:50:25,000
Speaker 1: interest and was it possible to do something with the

774
00:50:25,120 --> 00:50:28,640
Speaker 1: morphine molecule, to dissect it, to get rid of the

775
00:50:28,680 --> 00:50:33,200
Speaker 1: addictive potential, and to heighten the painkilling effect and the

776
00:50:33,320 --> 00:50:37,040
Speaker 1: beneficial effects of morphine and get rid of all of

777
00:50:37,200 --> 00:50:42,120
Speaker 1: the bad effects, the the addictive effects. This turns out

778
00:50:42,160 --> 00:50:44,200
Speaker 1: to be a quest that we are still engaged in.

779
00:50:44,960 --> 00:50:47,840
Speaker 1: It is a tough nut to crack scientifically, but that

780
00:50:48,000 --> 00:50:53,600
Speaker 1: laboratory was always in conversation with other laboratories that we're

781
00:50:53,640 --> 00:50:57,400
Speaker 1: doing this at the chemical bench and in UH animal

782
00:50:57,480 --> 00:51:01,880
Speaker 1: pharmacology at the University of Michigan, you have essentially Lexington.

783
00:51:02,160 --> 00:51:05,680
Speaker 1: That laboratory becomes a node in a network of three

784
00:51:05,800 --> 00:51:09,760
Speaker 1: laboratories that are looking at the molecular level, the animal

785
00:51:10,280 --> 00:51:14,360
Speaker 1: pharmacology and the human or clinical pharmacology. So the laboratory

786
00:51:14,440 --> 00:51:18,400
Speaker 1: at Lexington is called the Addiction Research Center. After nineteen

787
00:51:19,360 --> 00:51:22,160
Speaker 1: when it is joined, it becomes one of two working

788
00:51:22,280 --> 00:51:26,400
Speaker 1: laboratories of the National Institute of Mental Health. So and

789
00:51:26,560 --> 00:51:31,880
Speaker 1: I m H comes into being in and that laboratory,

790
00:51:31,960 --> 00:51:35,920
Speaker 1: along with one in Washington, d C, is joined together.

791
00:51:36,640 --> 00:51:40,160
Speaker 1: The idea is still being UH find a cure. But

792
00:51:40,360 --> 00:51:43,000
Speaker 1: if you can't find a cure, then now we have

793
00:51:43,080 --> 00:51:47,600
Speaker 1: a new goal. Find a way to change the morphine

794
00:51:47,640 --> 00:51:51,160
Speaker 1: molecule so that it won't be addictive. And in meanwhile,

795
00:51:51,640 --> 00:51:54,800
Speaker 1: all these other drugs are being produced by the pharmaceutical

796
00:51:54,920 --> 00:51:57,640
Speaker 1: company and all those ones need to be tested for

797
00:51:57,760 --> 00:52:01,600
Speaker 1: their potential for addiction another. Right, So you basically have

798
00:52:01,719 --> 00:52:05,680
Speaker 1: a population at Lexington of people both inmates about both

799
00:52:05,719 --> 00:52:08,080
Speaker 1: those who are incarcerated as well as those who are

800
00:52:08,160 --> 00:52:13,359
Speaker 1: volunteers who are basically volunteering for these programs to say,

801
00:52:13,719 --> 00:52:17,480
Speaker 1: test these drugs on me and use me as a

802
00:52:17,560 --> 00:52:20,240
Speaker 1: guinea pig um And by the way, and it returned.

803
00:52:20,280 --> 00:52:24,319
Speaker 1: What did they get in return for participant in the studies? Well,

804
00:52:24,360 --> 00:52:28,879
Speaker 1: so the question of compensation was always a big one

805
00:52:29,080 --> 00:52:33,120
Speaker 1: at Lexington. And that's partly because when you take a

806
00:52:33,520 --> 00:52:37,920
Speaker 1: prisoner out of a prison population think about this is

807
00:52:37,960 --> 00:52:42,680
Speaker 1: a big prison people. Uh, it's loud, You never have

808
00:52:42,800 --> 00:52:45,480
Speaker 1: any time to yourself, you don't have any privacy, any

809
00:52:45,520 --> 00:52:50,240
Speaker 1: private room. And so that's what they got. The compensation

810
00:52:50,640 --> 00:52:53,800
Speaker 1: was essentially to move out of the general population and

811
00:52:53,920 --> 00:52:57,600
Speaker 1: into a much quieter much you know. In addition, they

812
00:52:57,719 --> 00:53:06,880
Speaker 1: had five to late forties, they could designate compensation in

813
00:53:07,040 --> 00:53:10,480
Speaker 1: terms of their drug of choice, so they could save

814
00:53:10,640 --> 00:53:15,839
Speaker 1: up morphine or heroin. UM. Because the the other thing

815
00:53:15,880 --> 00:53:20,040
Speaker 1: that I haven't explained is that the drugs that are

816
00:53:20,080 --> 00:53:25,960
Speaker 1: being used in the laboratory are essentially cleaned up drugs

817
00:53:26,040 --> 00:53:29,680
Speaker 1: that are confiscated by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and

818
00:53:30,160 --> 00:53:33,960
Speaker 1: they are cycled back into research at Lexington after they

819
00:53:34,040 --> 00:53:37,839
Speaker 1: have been um, you know, cleaned up. And so there

820
00:53:37,960 --> 00:53:40,680
Speaker 1: is heroin there, and there is morphine, and they can

821
00:53:40,760 --> 00:53:44,000
Speaker 1: save that up and if they want to, they can

822
00:53:45,040 --> 00:53:51,719
Speaker 1: wait until they want to use that drug. So it's

823
00:53:51,760 --> 00:53:55,040
Speaker 1: called the drug bank, and we would view it today

824
00:53:55,360 --> 00:53:59,560
Speaker 1: as a highly unethical practice. But at the time they

825
00:53:59,640 --> 00:54:03,880
Speaker 1: weren't allowed to pay research subjects at all. They couldn't

826
00:54:03,880 --> 00:54:09,040
Speaker 1: pay any money um. And so they thought about, well,

827
00:54:09,200 --> 00:54:13,120
Speaker 1: what can we use to compensate people for uh, their

828
00:54:13,239 --> 00:54:16,759
Speaker 1: time and their trouble and their uh you know, kind

829
00:54:16,760 --> 00:54:20,759
Speaker 1: of giving giving their bodies to science um. And so

830
00:54:20,880 --> 00:54:23,880
Speaker 1: they came up with that answer. If you step back

831
00:54:24,520 --> 00:54:27,240
Speaker 1: and you say, here are people volunteering for these studies

832
00:54:27,400 --> 00:54:30,040
Speaker 1: and they can be given you know, later in later

833
00:54:30,200 --> 00:54:32,759
Speaker 1: years money or maybe a reduction in sentence, or they

834
00:54:32,800 --> 00:54:34,960
Speaker 1: can be given access to the drugs they would like

835
00:54:35,080 --> 00:54:38,560
Speaker 1: for a while. And you're dealing with a population of

836
00:54:38,640 --> 00:54:41,080
Speaker 1: people who say they never want to quit using drugs.

837
00:54:41,520 --> 00:54:45,400
Speaker 1: It does raise the bigger question like why, really, on

838
00:54:45,560 --> 00:54:48,799
Speaker 1: some bigger level, is that on ethical? Why wouldn't I mean,

839
00:54:48,880 --> 00:54:50,560
Speaker 1: obviously we can see how everybody got caught up and

840
00:54:50,640 --> 00:54:52,560
Speaker 1: see how what do you mean you're giving these people drugs?

841
00:54:52,640 --> 00:54:54,640
Speaker 1: You know that that's on ethical blah blah blah blah blah.

842
00:54:54,640 --> 00:54:56,839
Speaker 1: You're sustaining their addiction. But these are people who went

843
00:54:56,960 --> 00:55:00,560
Speaker 1: into being research subjects saying I never want to quit.

844
00:55:01,000 --> 00:55:02,440
Speaker 1: I mean, so, what do you think was it really

845
00:55:02,520 --> 00:55:05,759
Speaker 1: unethical to pay these folks and drugs? Yeah? So, um,

846
00:55:06,920 --> 00:55:09,320
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get myself in trouble by saying this, But

847
00:55:10,200 --> 00:55:13,320
Speaker 1: to tell you the truth, the scale of human experimentation

848
00:55:13,920 --> 00:55:20,160
Speaker 1: with currently illegal drugs today is huge, enormous, much bigger

849
00:55:20,680 --> 00:55:24,560
Speaker 1: than the scale and the levels of control um that

850
00:55:24,719 --> 00:55:27,200
Speaker 1: were in place at the Narcotic Farm, and in fact,

851
00:55:27,239 --> 00:55:31,160
Speaker 1: in the book Discovering Addiction, I try really hard to

852
00:55:31,360 --> 00:55:35,960
Speaker 1: differentiate between the ethics of these studies. I try really

853
00:55:36,040 --> 00:55:39,840
Speaker 1: hard to look at those kinds of questions, UM, in

854
00:55:40,040 --> 00:55:45,919
Speaker 1: part because I don't have the same response that many

855
00:55:46,040 --> 00:55:50,520
Speaker 1: people do. I don't say that that was unethical in

856
00:55:50,640 --> 00:55:53,719
Speaker 1: the ways that other people might say that it is.

857
00:55:54,120 --> 00:55:58,440
Speaker 1: The fact is the narcotic farm was a very small

858
00:55:58,920 --> 00:56:03,640
Speaker 1: research enterprise. UM and the larger pharmaceutical companies who are

859
00:56:03,680 --> 00:56:08,440
Speaker 1: innovating the nineteen fifties, we were awash in new pharmaceuticals

860
00:56:08,760 --> 00:56:12,200
Speaker 1: and they needed to be understood do they have addicted

861
00:56:12,840 --> 00:56:17,200
Speaker 1: potential or addiction liability as they would call it UM

862
00:56:17,800 --> 00:56:21,879
Speaker 1: or not? And so what they were the places where

863
00:56:22,040 --> 00:56:24,640
Speaker 1: these kinds of tests were being done at to scale.

864
00:56:25,080 --> 00:56:29,920
Speaker 1: We're actually state penitentiaries where pharmaceutical companies were building clinical

865
00:56:30,000 --> 00:56:34,040
Speaker 1: research facilities on the grounds of like Jackson State in

866
00:56:34,160 --> 00:56:39,359
Speaker 1: Michigan up John Park Davis right ultimately becomes Fiser Right.

867
00:56:39,480 --> 00:56:43,520
Speaker 1: All of these pharmaceutical companies are building clinical research facilities

868
00:56:43,600 --> 00:56:46,600
Speaker 1: because after nineteen sixty two you have to go through

869
00:56:46,760 --> 00:56:50,759
Speaker 1: Phase one, two and three trials, and Phase one was

870
00:56:50,920 --> 00:56:56,040
Speaker 1: all done on prisoners. UM. Almost Phase one trials in

871
00:56:56,080 --> 00:57:00,480
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties were done on prisoners. UH. There was

872
00:57:00,640 --> 00:57:03,320
Speaker 1: nothing like the effort that we have today. You know,

873
00:57:03,400 --> 00:57:06,719
Speaker 1: for Phase one trials and one arguably can say that

874
00:57:07,120 --> 00:57:12,080
Speaker 1: we're proceeding in an unethical way today because today we

875
00:57:12,200 --> 00:57:16,960
Speaker 1: ask people to volunteer for Phase one trials and um,

876
00:57:17,280 --> 00:57:21,560
Speaker 1: they're largely people of color, they're largely poor people. You know,

877
00:57:21,720 --> 00:57:25,280
Speaker 1: it's a very different world. Um. And you can say

878
00:57:25,360 --> 00:57:29,800
Speaker 1: that they are freer, but are they That's a real question.

879
00:57:29,880 --> 00:57:32,880
Speaker 1: And I have to say, Um, so much we that

880
00:57:33,000 --> 00:57:38,600
Speaker 1: we know in humans was generated initially at the Narcotic Farm.

881
00:57:39,440 --> 00:57:42,040
Speaker 1: It was known basically all over the world. The World

882
00:57:42,080 --> 00:57:47,720
Speaker 1: Health Organization turned to the laboratory, the Addiction Research Center UM.

883
00:57:48,040 --> 00:57:51,520
Speaker 1: Prior to our having the Controlled Substances Act and the

884
00:57:51,640 --> 00:57:56,680
Speaker 1: scheduling that we have today, the laboratory at Lexington rendered

885
00:57:56,800 --> 00:58:01,920
Speaker 1: decisions for whole Narcotic Control Sparatus. The Global Narcotic Control

886
00:58:02,000 --> 00:58:06,000
Speaker 1: Apparatus paid attention to the science at Lexington because it

887
00:58:06,080 --> 00:58:08,240
Speaker 1: was the only place where it was really set up

888
00:58:08,280 --> 00:58:11,040
Speaker 1: to be done. And that's partly because yes, they have

889
00:58:11,200 --> 00:58:18,240
Speaker 1: a captive population, but it's also a population that has knowledge,

890
00:58:18,880 --> 00:58:26,960
Speaker 1: has expertise, right, can be tapped to understand the effects

891
00:58:27,040 --> 00:58:30,680
Speaker 1: that these drugs have on people, not animals, right, not

892
00:58:30,840 --> 00:58:33,840
Speaker 1: in petri dishes or something right, but here you have

893
00:58:34,160 --> 00:58:36,520
Speaker 1: people who can actually talk to you and who have

894
00:58:36,640 --> 00:58:41,320
Speaker 1: a lingo, who have a way of describing their experiences, UM,

895
00:58:41,920 --> 00:58:46,080
Speaker 1: characterizing their experiences very accurately and precisely. Now in the

896
00:58:46,200 --> 00:58:51,280
Speaker 1: nineties seventies, there begins to be a real UH what

897
00:58:51,440 --> 00:58:55,320
Speaker 1: I would call a knowledge explosion, late sixties, early seventies

898
00:58:55,400 --> 00:58:59,360
Speaker 1: knowledge explosion, and UH the Addiction Research Center is no

899
00:58:59,480 --> 00:59:02,720
Speaker 1: longer the only game in town, and so they begin

900
00:59:02,880 --> 00:59:09,680
Speaker 1: to be competing paradigms. That begins to be inquiry UM elsewhere.

901
00:59:10,000 --> 00:59:13,080
Speaker 1: And that's really important. But one of the things about

902
00:59:13,160 --> 00:59:18,280
Speaker 1: Lexington is that the science changed over time. So in

903
00:59:18,360 --> 00:59:23,800
Speaker 1: the beginning, you don't have neuro psycho pharmacology, right, you

904
00:59:23,840 --> 00:59:27,880
Speaker 1: don't have neuropharmacology until the fifties, and when they begin

905
00:59:28,000 --> 00:59:31,680
Speaker 1: to hire people to study the brain UM, and they

906
00:59:31,800 --> 00:59:35,840
Speaker 1: hire a neuropharmacologist UM in the sixties who comes in

907
00:59:36,480 --> 00:59:40,880
Speaker 1: and who begins to really look at UM what's going

908
00:59:41,000 --> 00:59:43,840
Speaker 1: on in the brain, and from clinical description is able

909
00:59:43,920 --> 00:59:48,080
Speaker 1: to characterize UH the opiate receptor, right, that there are

910
00:59:48,120 --> 00:59:52,080
Speaker 1: more than one, that there are multiple opioid receptors, and

911
00:59:52,720 --> 00:59:56,240
Speaker 1: UH shows essentially where they are and what they're doing

912
00:59:56,600 --> 00:59:59,240
Speaker 1: in the brain. And so this early identification of opiate

913
00:59:59,280 --> 01:00:01,680
Speaker 1: receptors in the brain in the nineteen sixties that the

914
01:00:01,920 --> 01:00:07,080
Speaker 1: Addiction Research Center is really important for our studies today.

915
01:00:07,160 --> 01:00:09,200
Speaker 1: But there's one other big piece of the research that

916
01:00:09,360 --> 01:00:12,760
Speaker 1: was going on, which was the research on psychedelics and

917
01:00:12,880 --> 01:00:18,240
Speaker 1: giving some of these inmates LSD and mescaline and psilocybin um,

918
01:00:18,400 --> 01:00:20,400
Speaker 1: you know, not unlike what Learry and Albert were doing

919
01:00:20,400 --> 01:00:22,640
Speaker 1: their early days at Harvard, and a lot of this

920
01:00:22,760 --> 01:00:25,840
Speaker 1: research back in the fifties being funded, you know, quietly

921
01:00:26,000 --> 01:00:29,160
Speaker 1: by the CIA. It was not publicly revealed at that time.

922
01:00:29,680 --> 01:00:32,320
Speaker 1: But there were some very serious studies, I mean, beneficial

923
01:00:32,320 --> 01:00:35,280
Speaker 1: studies that are still regarded, you know, as legitimate scientific

924
01:00:35,320 --> 01:00:38,160
Speaker 1: studies that came out of those narcotic farm studies of

925
01:00:38,240 --> 01:00:41,479
Speaker 1: giving the inmates, uh some psycholic just say more about

926
01:00:41,520 --> 01:00:45,760
Speaker 1: that psycholic thing. Yeah, it's a fascinating story. So in

927
01:00:45,840 --> 01:00:49,080
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, I don't know, there was something like

928
01:00:49,280 --> 01:00:54,280
Speaker 1: a D laboratories studying LSD. LSD was a tremendously well

929
01:00:54,480 --> 01:00:58,520
Speaker 1: studied drug and um the people at the Narcotic Farm,

930
01:00:58,560 --> 01:01:01,200
Speaker 1: We're pretty sure that L. S. Steve Esklin. There was

931
01:01:01,240 --> 01:01:04,440
Speaker 1: a lot of interest in those drugs because they worked

932
01:01:04,840 --> 01:01:07,959
Speaker 1: completely differently. They had a different effect on the brain,

933
01:01:08,240 --> 01:01:10,919
Speaker 1: They worked through different neural pathways, and that was known

934
01:01:11,040 --> 01:01:14,640
Speaker 1: at the Addiction Research Center, and so they were interested

935
01:01:14,840 --> 01:01:17,760
Speaker 1: in that because they realized these didn't have the same

936
01:01:18,480 --> 01:01:22,800
Speaker 1: tolerance um and withdrawal effects that they were used to

937
01:01:22,960 --> 01:01:27,200
Speaker 1: seeing with morphine. And so, if you are studying LSD

938
01:01:27,920 --> 01:01:32,360
Speaker 1: UM in the fifties, you are typically funded by the CIA.

939
01:01:32,560 --> 01:01:35,600
Speaker 1: The CIA comes knocking at your door. The Addiction Research

940
01:01:35,680 --> 01:01:41,400
Speaker 1: Center suddenly became very um well equipped as a result

941
01:01:41,480 --> 01:01:47,120
Speaker 1: of these LSD studies, and they benefited for about ten

942
01:01:47,280 --> 01:01:51,240
Speaker 1: years from the funding of the CIA, and in particular

943
01:01:51,680 --> 01:01:58,520
Speaker 1: that UM favorite UM program UH, the mk Ultra program UH.

944
01:01:58,600 --> 01:02:02,080
Speaker 1: And so that of course got them into considerable trouble

945
01:02:02,200 --> 01:02:05,720
Speaker 1: later in the nineteen seventies when Congress started to look

946
01:02:06,240 --> 01:02:09,920
Speaker 1: at what had been done in the fifties. Because in

947
01:02:10,000 --> 01:02:15,240
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, by the time the Congress, Teddy Kennedy

948
01:02:15,360 --> 01:02:22,280
Speaker 1: and so forth began to investigate human research on federal prisoners,

949
01:02:22,960 --> 01:02:25,720
Speaker 1: the Narcotic Farm is the only place where there are

950
01:02:25,800 --> 01:02:31,400
Speaker 1: still federal prisoners who are participating in drug studies. State prisons, yes,

951
01:02:31,800 --> 01:02:35,160
Speaker 1: but federal no. And so one of the things that

952
01:02:35,520 --> 01:02:39,400
Speaker 1: the a r C had trouble with in the sixties

953
01:02:39,720 --> 01:02:43,439
Speaker 1: was that change that I talked about earlier in sixty six,

954
01:02:43,520 --> 01:02:46,800
Speaker 1: the Narcotic Addict Rehabilitation Act. It meant that no one

955
01:02:47,400 --> 01:02:50,760
Speaker 1: was at Lexington for more than six months. And um,

956
01:02:51,200 --> 01:02:55,200
Speaker 1: it was a requirement at the Addiction Research Center that

957
01:02:55,640 --> 01:02:58,280
Speaker 1: to be in a study you had to be drug

958
01:02:58,480 --> 01:03:02,480
Speaker 1: free for six months before release. So they could not

959
01:03:02,880 --> 01:03:08,520
Speaker 1: use people who went there under the Narcotic Addict Rehabilitation Acts.

960
01:03:08,640 --> 01:03:11,720
Speaker 1: So what they did I didn't realize that really is

961
01:03:11,760 --> 01:03:13,800
Speaker 1: a book, because I mean a lot of the people

962
01:03:13,840 --> 01:03:15,640
Speaker 1: who had been in the studies were people who had

963
01:03:15,680 --> 01:03:18,520
Speaker 1: been sentenced to very long prison sentences, and that was almost,

964
01:03:18,560 --> 01:03:21,080
Speaker 1: I think, one of the requirements of admitting somebody. And

965
01:03:21,400 --> 01:03:25,640
Speaker 1: so after by the mid sixties, after Narcotic Addic Rehabilitation Act,

966
01:03:25,840 --> 01:03:28,040
Speaker 1: it means that nobody going to Lexington is stand there

967
01:03:28,080 --> 01:03:31,080
Speaker 1: for more than six months. So I mean, as your sense,

968
01:03:31,120 --> 01:03:32,720
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously you co authored a book in the

969
01:03:32,800 --> 01:03:35,320
Speaker 1: Narcotic Farm, and another book grew out of a lot

970
01:03:35,360 --> 01:03:37,440
Speaker 1: of the research that happened there. Would you say in

971
01:03:37,560 --> 01:03:40,760
Speaker 1: retrospect it was a net plus in terms of the

972
01:03:40,800 --> 01:03:44,640
Speaker 1: American history of dealing with drugs. I always sit with

973
01:03:44,760 --> 01:03:47,680
Speaker 1: the paradox that there will never be another narcotic farm.

974
01:03:47,920 --> 01:03:51,360
Speaker 1: I don't think that there's a reason to return to

975
01:03:51,520 --> 01:03:56,200
Speaker 1: a narcotic farm model. But um, I also think that

976
01:03:56,520 --> 01:04:00,800
Speaker 1: we learned something in terms of this was a low

977
01:04:00,960 --> 01:04:06,200
Speaker 1: coercion kind of institution. People who went there learned, in

978
01:04:06,360 --> 01:04:09,680
Speaker 1: some cases for the first time that they were human beings.

979
01:04:10,240 --> 01:04:15,800
Speaker 1: There was a largely humane and compassionate ethos to the place,

980
01:04:16,480 --> 01:04:20,360
Speaker 1: and they were respected, and some of them got well,

981
01:04:20,760 --> 01:04:24,040
Speaker 1: and some of them didn't come back. And actually, I

982
01:04:24,160 --> 01:04:27,240
Speaker 1: look at the rates of relapse and recidivism at the

983
01:04:27,320 --> 01:04:30,040
Speaker 1: Narcotic Farm, and I have to say they're just not

984
01:04:30,280 --> 01:04:32,880
Speaker 1: that different from what we see in a lot of

985
01:04:32,920 --> 01:04:36,600
Speaker 1: treatment programs, most treatment programs today. Yeah, I mean, the

986
01:04:36,680 --> 01:04:39,520
Speaker 1: simple fact that a third of the inmates were people

987
01:04:39,560 --> 01:04:42,959
Speaker 1: who went there voluntarily, which cannot be said of any

988
01:04:43,040 --> 01:04:46,200
Speaker 1: other prison I've ever heard about in history, is a

989
01:04:46,280 --> 01:04:51,040
Speaker 1: sort of remarkable fact as well. So, Nancy, I wanna

990
01:04:51,400 --> 01:04:55,920
Speaker 1: thank you very very much for having this conversation with me.

991
01:04:56,080 --> 01:04:58,280
Speaker 1: I mean, I just loved reading A Narcotic Farm. There's

992
01:04:58,280 --> 01:05:00,760
Speaker 1: those who a documentary U based on the book that

993
01:05:00,880 --> 01:05:04,920
Speaker 1: people can find I think on YouTube. I think you

994
01:05:04,960 --> 01:05:08,440
Speaker 1: can find on vimeo. Actually, Ben, thank you Ethan for

995
01:05:08,560 --> 01:05:10,560
Speaker 1: all the work that you have done to bring this

996
01:05:11,240 --> 01:05:14,760
Speaker 1: kind of perspective to the American people. Well, thank you

997
01:05:14,920 --> 01:05:22,640
Speaker 1: very much. Okay, take care. If you're enjoying Psychoactive, please

998
01:05:22,760 --> 01:05:24,960
Speaker 1: tell your friends about it, or you can write us

999
01:05:24,960 --> 01:05:28,080
Speaker 1: a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

1000
01:05:28,560 --> 01:05:30,920
Speaker 1: We love to hear from our listeners. If you'd like

1001
01:05:31,080 --> 01:05:34,000
Speaker 1: to share your own stories, comments and ideas, then leave

1002
01:05:34,040 --> 01:05:37,920
Speaker 1: us a message at one eight three three seven seven

1003
01:05:38,080 --> 01:05:43,960
Speaker 1: nine six that's eight three three psycho zero, or you

1004
01:05:44,040 --> 01:05:47,520
Speaker 1: can email us at Psychoactive at protozoa dot com, or

1005
01:05:47,720 --> 01:05:50,600
Speaker 1: find me on Twitter at Ethan natal Man. You can

1006
01:05:50,680 --> 01:05:54,840
Speaker 1: also find contact information in our show notes. Psychoactive is

1007
01:05:54,880 --> 01:05:58,400
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's

1008
01:05:58,440 --> 01:06:01,880
Speaker 1: hosted by me Ethan they Adelman is produced by Noam

1009
01:06:01,960 --> 01:06:05,960
Speaker 1: Osband and Josh Stain. The executive producers are Dylan Golden,

1010
01:06:06,160 --> 01:06:10,320
Speaker 1: Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus, and Darren Aronovsky. From Protozoma Pictures,

1011
01:06:10,480 --> 01:06:13,240
Speaker 1: Alex Williams and Matt Frederick from My Heart Radio and

1012
01:06:13,400 --> 01:06:17,720
Speaker 1: me Ethan Edelman. Our music is by Ari Blusien and

1013
01:06:17,840 --> 01:06:21,880
Speaker 1: a special thanks to a. Brios f Bianca Grimshaw and

1014
01:06:22,040 --> 01:06:35,080
Speaker 1: Robert Deep. Next week we'll be talking about the country

1015
01:06:35,160 --> 01:06:38,080
Speaker 1: with perhaps the most fascinating drug policy in the world.

1016
01:06:38,680 --> 01:06:42,880
Speaker 1: That's the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has also been

1017
01:06:42,920 --> 01:06:47,080
Speaker 1: a huge supporter of harm reduction policies. My guest will

1018
01:06:47,120 --> 01:06:50,840
Speaker 1: be Mazzi ar Gabi, professor at the University of Exeter

1019
01:06:51,240 --> 01:06:55,640
Speaker 1: in the UK. I just kind of recall a statement

1020
01:06:55,840 --> 01:06:59,240
Speaker 1: by the late Amany, you know, the leader of the

1021
01:06:59,320 --> 01:07:03,840
Speaker 1: revolution Supreme Lider Iran in the eighties that he said

1022
01:07:03,920 --> 01:07:06,480
Speaker 1: that we have to fight the war on two fronts.

1023
01:07:07,160 --> 01:07:09,960
Speaker 1: The first front the war against the Iraq, but the

1024
01:07:10,080 --> 01:07:13,320
Speaker 1: second front was the war against drug and addiction. So

1025
01:07:13,520 --> 01:07:16,000
Speaker 1: this is just to give you a sense of how

1026
01:07:16,440 --> 01:07:20,880
Speaker 1: entrenched it was with the political history of revolution Iran.

1027
01:07:21,440 --> 01:07:24,120
Speaker 1: It made me understand that it really needed to be

1028
01:07:24,560 --> 01:07:28,760
Speaker 1: discussed with all new attention. Subscribe to Cycleactive now see

1029
01:07:28,760 --> 01:07:29,320
Speaker 1: you don't miss it.