WEBVTT - Nancy Campbell on The Narcotic Farm 0:00:00.280 --> 0:00:07.720 Hi, I'm Ethan Nadelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production 0:00:07.760 --> 0:00:11.600 of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the 0:00:11.640 --> 0:00:15.040 show where we talk about all things drugs. But any 0:00:15.120 --> 0:00:18.760 views expressed here do not represent those of my Heart Media, 0:00:18.920 --> 0:00:23.599 Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, as an 0:00:23.680 --> 0:00:26.840 inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not even 0:00:26.920 --> 0:00:31.120 represent my own. And nothing contained in this show should 0:00:31.120 --> 0:00:34.040 be used as medical advice or encouragement to use any 0:00:34.080 --> 0:00:45.600 type of drugs. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. So today we're gonna 0:00:45.960 --> 0:00:51.919 delve into some history on a remarkable place called the 0:00:52.040 --> 0:00:56.560 Narcotic Farm. The Narcotic Farm that was in Lexington, Kentucky, 0:00:56.720 --> 0:01:01.200 created nineteen thirties as a place to sort of simultaneously 0:01:01.400 --> 0:01:05.840 punish and treat drug addicts. Now, my guest, who is 0:01:05.920 --> 0:01:10.839 this an extraordinary academic is Nancy Campbell. She's a professor 0:01:11.840 --> 0:01:15.800 at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, which is outside Albany, New York. 0:01:16.200 --> 0:01:19.040 She's been a leading drug scholar for many years. She's 0:01:19.040 --> 0:01:22.920 an historian of science and technology who's focused on legal 0:01:22.920 --> 0:01:26.160 and illegal drugs and on harm reduction. She's written two 0:01:26.200 --> 0:01:30.520 books on gender and addiction, but she's done also two 0:01:30.560 --> 0:01:33.720 books that are relevant to the subject at hand. One 0:01:34.040 --> 0:01:37.440 is a book she wrote some years ago called Discovering Addiction, 0:01:37.760 --> 0:01:41.440 about the science and politics of substance abuse research, and 0:01:41.480 --> 0:01:44.360 the other one is the book called The Narcotic Farm, 0:01:44.400 --> 0:01:49.200 the rise and fall of America's first prison for drug addicts. So, Nancy, 0:01:49.280 --> 0:01:53.000 thank you so much for joining me on Psychoactive. I'm 0:01:53.040 --> 0:01:55.920 delighted to be here. Ethan. Well, you know, I should 0:01:55.920 --> 0:01:58.120 also tell our audience that you and I have, you know, 0:01:58.200 --> 0:02:00.760 cross paths a few times over the years, but our 0:02:00.840 --> 0:02:04.240 principal intersection was just a few months ago in June 0:02:04.240 --> 0:02:07.200 of this year, when we both attended the conference of 0:02:07.200 --> 0:02:12.800 an organization called Alcohol and Drug Historians Society a d 0:02:13.120 --> 0:02:15.640 h S, which was a place where I met all 0:02:15.639 --> 0:02:18.280 sorts of interesting people I want to have as guests 0:02:18.280 --> 0:02:21.040 on Psychoactive, and you're the first one from that conference 0:02:21.040 --> 0:02:22.960 I've invited, to be honest, So thank you so much 0:02:23.000 --> 0:02:25.200 for doing this with me. So let's just jump into 0:02:25.280 --> 0:02:28.560 this thing. I mean, obviously, this history about the creation 0:02:28.639 --> 0:02:31.200 of a sort of narcotic farm, a kind of cross 0:02:31.280 --> 0:02:34.160 between a prison and a treatment program that was set 0:02:34.200 --> 0:02:37.520 up in Lexington by the US government in the nineteen thirties. 0:02:37.560 --> 0:02:42.880 At what brought you to be interested in this place? Well, so, 0:02:42.919 --> 0:02:46.639 I wrote a dissertation in the nineteen nineties about US 0:02:46.720 --> 0:02:51.040 drug policy in the nineteen In the nineteen fifties, there 0:02:51.080 --> 0:02:54.120 were a bunch of hearings. They're called the Daniel Hearings, 0:02:54.120 --> 0:02:57.040 and they were televised and they were held in seven 0:02:57.080 --> 0:02:59.160 cities around the country, and there were a lot of 0:02:59.160 --> 0:03:03.720 witnesses which testified in these hearings, and the New York hearings. 0:03:04.240 --> 0:03:09.359 Um New York City hearings involved these doctors and researchers, scientists, 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:13.720 and what struck me about them was that they were 0:03:13.760 --> 0:03:17.800 all from Lexington, Kentucky, and they all sounded a little 0:03:17.800 --> 0:03:22.000 bit like drug policy reformers sound today. They saw drug 0:03:22.800 --> 0:03:28.000 users as human beings. They definitely did not think that 0:03:28.080 --> 0:03:32.680 incarceration or criminalization was the way to go, and they 0:03:32.840 --> 0:03:36.280 argued with the police and the law enforcement and the 0:03:36.320 --> 0:03:40.320 federal apparatus because they thought that drug addiction should be 0:03:40.320 --> 0:03:43.520 placed under the banner of medicine and that it was 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:46.680 a health problem. And that sounds very familiar to our 0:03:46.800 --> 0:03:49.640 ears and so I got curious about them. I thought, 0:03:49.880 --> 0:03:53.000 you know, what did they put in the water in Lexington, 0:03:53.120 --> 0:03:58.160 Kentucky that would lead this group of researchers and doctors 0:03:58.160 --> 0:04:01.960 and people who treated people who were drug addicts and 0:04:01.960 --> 0:04:06.400 they called them addicts in those days, to make that argument. 0:04:06.720 --> 0:04:10.880 And that turned out to be a harder question to 0:04:10.920 --> 0:04:14.360 answer than I realized, and also easier because they were 0:04:14.400 --> 0:04:18.880 all at the U S Narcotic Farm in Lexington, Kentucky, 0:04:19.000 --> 0:04:23.560 and they were all federal employees of the Public Health Service, 0:04:23.960 --> 0:04:27.800 the US Public Health Service, and they were there to 0:04:28.360 --> 0:04:32.599 kind of try to discover what they could about this 0:04:32.600 --> 0:04:35.840 this disease, and they thought of it as a chronic 0:04:36.000 --> 0:04:39.920 relapsing disease. And so they were an interesting group, and 0:04:40.000 --> 0:04:43.680 I tracked them from the mid nineties um into the 0:04:43.720 --> 0:04:46.200 early two thousands. I didn't have an opportunity to really 0:04:46.240 --> 0:04:48.840 track them down. And then in the early two thousand's, 0:04:48.880 --> 0:04:52.040 I thought it's time to try to figure out what 0:04:52.160 --> 0:04:56.159 this American institution was before everything about it really disappeared. 0:04:56.440 --> 0:04:59.680 I see, now we should explain to our audience, you know, 0:05:00.240 --> 0:05:03.960 when these institutions emerged. I mean, I will talk basically 0:05:04.000 --> 0:05:07.119 about the one in Lexington, which was the key one, 0:05:07.680 --> 0:05:09.600 but there was another one in Fort Worth which did 0:05:09.600 --> 0:05:12.000 not have a whole research program attached to it. But 0:05:12.040 --> 0:05:14.440 when we think about the emergence of these things, when 0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:17.400 Congress authorizes them in the nineteen thirties and when they're 0:05:17.400 --> 0:05:20.880 created in nineteen thirties, let's set the context for this, 0:05:21.320 --> 0:05:23.200 because I think you know, some of the our audience 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:25.440 will know that you go back to nineteenth century and 0:05:25.560 --> 0:05:31.240 drugs like morphine and cocaine were legal, legally available, widely prescribed, 0:05:31.320 --> 0:05:34.239 could be gotten over the counter, ordered by mail order. 0:05:34.279 --> 0:05:37.480 They were recommended for, you know, all sorts of aches 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:40.520 and pains. And then you see in the early twentieth century, 0:05:40.560 --> 0:05:43.200 late nine or early twenties century, kind of growing backlash, 0:05:43.240 --> 0:05:47.360 growing concerns. Heroin had been invented in eight initially a 0:05:47.400 --> 0:05:50.480 cost suppression. People begin to realize it's it's dangerous. People 0:05:50.480 --> 0:05:53.320 can begin to realize the dangers of cocaine, and so 0:05:53.480 --> 0:05:57.840 you get the nineteen fourteen Harrison Narcotic Act, which begins 0:05:57.920 --> 0:06:01.440 to change the whole perspective of US drug policy. So 0:06:01.560 --> 0:06:03.160 if you could take us a little bit through that 0:06:03.320 --> 0:06:06.640 history from around fourteen, the Harrison Narcotic Act and the 0:06:06.760 --> 0:06:09.320 Supreme Court, and how we land up in a much 0:06:09.360 --> 0:06:13.520 more punitive situation within a decade or so. Yeah, it's 0:06:13.560 --> 0:06:18.080 actually a really interesting history and relevant to today's discussions. 0:06:18.560 --> 0:06:22.440 So the Harrison Act was a tax act, and it 0:06:22.600 --> 0:06:25.560 was not at all clear to anyone how exactly that 0:06:25.760 --> 0:06:29.240 was going to influence the practice of medicine, which had 0:06:29.440 --> 0:06:33.760 veered away from using the opiates and over prescribing the 0:06:33.880 --> 0:06:37.839 opiates um in the early twentieth century. So heroin, for instance, 0:06:37.880 --> 0:06:43.120 in the US was never indiscriminately available. It might be prescribed, 0:06:43.440 --> 0:06:47.240 but it was never really used medically, and so that, 0:06:47.880 --> 0:06:53.000 uh was an interesting thing. In nineteen fourteen, um the 0:06:53.080 --> 0:06:55.760 Harrison Act, there weren't that many people who were that 0:06:55.880 --> 0:07:00.960 concerned really honestly about the problems of opiate addiction. However, 0:07:01.720 --> 0:07:04.480 once the Act went into effect, there were a lot 0:07:04.640 --> 0:07:11.200 of people who were using medically using morphine, and that 0:07:12.080 --> 0:07:14.400 meant that there were suddenly a lot of people who 0:07:14.480 --> 0:07:17.720 were basically trying to get off morphine. And so we 0:07:17.920 --> 0:07:21.840 started in the US morphine maintenance clinics, and the morphine 0:07:21.880 --> 0:07:25.440 maintenance clinics went into effect towards the end of the 0:07:25.680 --> 0:07:28.440 of the teens of the nineteen tens, there was a 0:07:28.520 --> 0:07:31.520 lot of backlash to these morphine maintenance clinics, and they 0:07:31.560 --> 0:07:36.920 were in cities like Shreveport, Louisiana, or Jacksonville, Florida. The 0:07:36.960 --> 0:07:40.440 New York City clinic they were shut down in the 0:07:40.520 --> 0:07:45.200 early nineteen twenties. So by nineteen twenty one two they 0:07:45.240 --> 0:07:47.720 were mainly shut down for a variety of reasons, but 0:07:47.800 --> 0:07:51.040 mainly having to do with prosecution of the Harrison Act, 0:07:51.800 --> 0:07:54.680 because physicians began to be prosecuted, so that meant that 0:07:54.760 --> 0:07:58.360 physicians began to be scared. So these clinics that had 0:07:58.440 --> 0:08:01.120 popped over the years, were they actual see maintenance clinics 0:08:01.200 --> 0:08:04.840 or are they more detox clinics designed to get people off. No, 0:08:05.240 --> 0:08:09.160 they were they were maintenance clinics, but they functioned as 0:08:09.240 --> 0:08:13.680 detox clinics eventually, and they were shut down rapidly, so 0:08:13.800 --> 0:08:16.560 there was no real attention to the patient at that 0:08:16.720 --> 0:08:20.400 point and just doing detox. Even the ones saying we're 0:08:20.440 --> 0:08:23.200 going to give you declining doses to get you off morphine, 0:08:23.240 --> 0:08:26.320 even those ones start getting shut down by the authorities. Yes, 0:08:26.640 --> 0:08:31.000 so in this era, it's the Treasury Department which enforced 0:08:31.280 --> 0:08:34.440 prohibition they inforced, you know, they're they're doing the work 0:08:35.120 --> 0:08:38.440 rather than the Federal Bureau of Narcotics doesn't really start 0:08:38.520 --> 0:08:42.520 up until nineteen and so you have this period of 0:08:42.640 --> 0:08:46.240 time when it's really very unclear whether physicians are gonna 0:08:47.080 --> 0:08:50.320 It becomes clear to physicians that they are in danger 0:08:50.920 --> 0:08:55.720 of prosecution if they continue to maintain their patients on morphine, 0:08:55.920 --> 0:09:00.520 and so they basically eradicate the practice of morphine inuntenance 0:09:00.800 --> 0:09:05.000 and they switch a lot of people onto barbiturates, onto 0:09:05.320 --> 0:09:11.199 other sedatives, other drugs, and they basically create a kind 0:09:11.280 --> 0:09:15.920 of criminalization that gets heightened towards the end of the twenties. 0:09:16.280 --> 0:09:18.960 And in the end of the twenties and the late twenties. 0:09:19.679 --> 0:09:22.640 You remember nineteen twenty nine. Everyone knows that's the year 0:09:22.679 --> 0:09:27.600 of the Great Depression. But in early nineteen the US Congress, 0:09:28.160 --> 0:09:32.080 prior to the Great Depression beginning, they legislate the building 0:09:32.120 --> 0:09:36.160 of these narcotic farms. Because by that time there is 0:09:36.280 --> 0:09:41.640 overcrowding in prisons. About a third of the people who 0:09:41.679 --> 0:09:47.080 are in US federal prisons are drug users, and they 0:09:47.200 --> 0:09:51.280 decide that they don't want prisons containing drug users, and 0:09:51.360 --> 0:09:56.320 they decide to essentially divert them too large federal narcotic farms. 0:09:56.600 --> 0:10:00.160 And so in the twenties and thirties, right there is 0:10:00.200 --> 0:10:02.760 an attempt, a real attempt to find a cure. The 0:10:02.880 --> 0:10:06.440 idea is science can find a cure for drug addiction, 0:10:07.040 --> 0:10:11.360 and if we can only give our researchers are scientists, 0:10:11.800 --> 0:10:16.199 enough support, then we will be able to cure what 0:10:16.440 --> 0:10:19.439 is clearly too many a disease, and they call it 0:10:19.520 --> 0:10:22.440 a disease throughout that period. So the U s Narcotic 0:10:22.559 --> 0:10:26.240 Farm is authorized to be built by the US Congress 0:10:26.400 --> 0:10:30.520 in the early early in the year of nine. So 0:10:31.000 --> 0:10:33.640 I recently came across a new book by a fellow 0:10:33.720 --> 0:10:36.120 named Kenny Anderson, who I know from the world of 0:10:36.200 --> 0:10:39.120 sort of harm reduction advocacy around alcohol. But he has 0:10:39.160 --> 0:10:42.760 a new little book called From Inebriate Asylums to Narcotic Farms, 0:10:42.800 --> 0:10:45.839 and one thing he does is also placed the narcotic 0:10:45.960 --> 0:10:50.040 farm approach in this tradition of inebriate asylums of sending 0:10:50.480 --> 0:10:52.640 you know, people who are addicted to alcohol in a 0:10:52.720 --> 0:10:56.800 severe way to these asylums for some sort of quote 0:10:56.840 --> 0:11:00.640 unquote treatment and for segregating them from the general population. 0:11:01.040 --> 0:11:03.199 And I was curious. I mean, I didn't see much 0:11:03.200 --> 0:11:05.280 about this in the Narcotic Farm book. But do you 0:11:05.400 --> 0:11:08.040 see this as part of the broader kind of you know, 0:11:08.760 --> 0:11:11.040 zeitgeist of what's going on and the way people are 0:11:11.040 --> 0:11:13.679 thinking about addiction or in fact, is the narcotic and 0:11:13.720 --> 0:11:16.840 alcohol things so separate that you would say that they 0:11:16.880 --> 0:11:20.760 don't really overlap in any way. No, I I would 0:11:20.760 --> 0:11:26.319 say they do overlap, and that move from an asylum. Right. 0:11:26.360 --> 0:11:29.079 The thing about the asylums was that people of all 0:11:29.280 --> 0:11:33.240 kinds were in those, right. They might be alcoholics, they 0:11:33.320 --> 0:11:37.320 might be people who have co occurring mental health disorders 0:11:37.480 --> 0:11:41.360 with alcoholism or without, with drug addiction or without, and 0:11:41.440 --> 0:11:44.040 so you might have people who have no co occurring 0:11:44.200 --> 0:11:48.360 disorders but who are drug users also would sometimes be 0:11:48.640 --> 0:11:52.160 placed in those settings, and states, you know, did different 0:11:52.240 --> 0:11:56.120 things with them, but they definitely lumped everybody together. The 0:11:56.280 --> 0:12:00.800 Narcotic Farm was an attempt to separate out people whose 0:12:00.920 --> 0:12:06.800 sole problem was drug addiction narcotic addiction, and narcotics was 0:12:06.880 --> 0:12:09.360 a catchall term at that time that did refer to 0:12:09.720 --> 0:12:12.880 both opiates and cocaine, which is a little bit hard 0:12:13.000 --> 0:12:16.719 for us to understand because they are drugs that do 0:12:17.000 --> 0:12:20.520 very different things have very different effects. However, it was 0:12:20.679 --> 0:12:26.640 basically um what became the illicit market after the Harrison 0:12:26.840 --> 0:12:31.280 Narcotic Act. And so the narcotic farms did not accept 0:12:31.679 --> 0:12:36.440 alcoholics and did not even like to accept barbiturate users, 0:12:36.800 --> 0:12:39.160 although they did and they did study and try to 0:12:39.200 --> 0:12:43.760 figure out how to respond to barbiturates um withdrawal because 0:12:43.840 --> 0:12:47.080 that can cause seizures and death. They were primarily made 0:12:47.679 --> 0:12:52.480 for the opioid user, and at that time that meant 0:12:52.559 --> 0:12:57.679 heroin and that meant morphine. Now many many morphine users 0:12:57.800 --> 0:13:01.120 and heroin users would also use kane, but they did 0:13:01.200 --> 0:13:04.680 not regard it as their primary drug of choice, shall 0:13:04.720 --> 0:13:08.640 we say, And so that and other drugs were also 0:13:08.840 --> 0:13:12.480 very little represented in the narcotic farm. So cannabis, for instance, 0:13:13.240 --> 0:13:16.240 although that was studied slightly and people did refer to it, 0:13:16.679 --> 0:13:20.480 it was not thought of as an addictive substance in 0:13:20.600 --> 0:13:23.959 anything like the same way. These were really made for 0:13:24.120 --> 0:13:27.280 opiate users, you know, the opium problem. They're solving the 0:13:27.360 --> 0:13:30.840 opium problem. So the US Congress is solving the opium 0:13:30.920 --> 0:13:34.800 problem by building these farms. These large and they were 0:13:34.880 --> 0:13:39.000 they were a thousand acres and they were large buildings, 0:13:39.120 --> 0:13:43.880 large farms, sort of congregate care for people who have 0:13:44.240 --> 0:13:47.959 opium problems, and the idea was six months of essentially 0:13:48.080 --> 0:13:51.600 drying out and you'd be good. But the narcotic farms 0:13:51.640 --> 0:13:54.719 were also they were very interesting as instance, just to 0:13:54.760 --> 0:13:56.480 be clear here you say the narcotic farms, we were 0:13:56.520 --> 0:13:59.720 basically talking about two. Write the Lexington, the most famous 0:13:59.760 --> 0:14:02.480 one has opened up in ninety five and that has 0:14:02.559 --> 0:14:05.040 a major research part that we'll talk about later in 0:14:05.080 --> 0:14:08.160 our discussion. And then Fort Worth, Texas, which is the 0:14:08.200 --> 0:14:10.640 second one, opened up a few years later. And I 0:14:10.679 --> 0:14:12.400 think it's important, you know, for our listeners to know 0:14:12.559 --> 0:14:15.319 that when Lexington's launched, it's a big deal. None of 0:14:15.360 --> 0:14:17.880 the stuff we're talking about was secret. I mean, when 0:14:17.960 --> 0:14:20.920 Lexington gets opened, the surgeon generals there, the governor of 0:14:21.000 --> 0:14:25.760 Kentucky's there, there's national media that's describing the narcotic farm 0:14:25.880 --> 0:14:28.040 is everything from quote unquote a new deal for the 0:14:28.160 --> 0:14:31.080 drug addict to quote unquote a million dollar flop house 0:14:31.200 --> 0:14:33.880 for junkies. So I interrupted you there and saying, so 0:14:34.000 --> 0:14:37.240 why was it called a farm? Yeah, so that it's 0:14:37.480 --> 0:14:40.960 it's pretty interesting. It was an actual farm. They sought 0:14:41.120 --> 0:14:44.360 for at arable land, and so there were there were 0:14:44.440 --> 0:14:49.120 contests across the country for first of all, where would 0:14:49.120 --> 0:14:52.680 these things be cited. And remember this is the depression, 0:14:53.240 --> 0:14:58.840 and so cities and municipalities would compete to get federal jobs, 0:14:59.600 --> 0:15:02.440 and there were also competitions for what they would be named. 0:15:02.840 --> 0:15:06.640 And this was really thought of as an alternative to prison. 0:15:07.200 --> 0:15:09.200 This was thought of as a new deal for the 0:15:09.280 --> 0:15:12.640 drug addict, and that is how it was represented in 0:15:12.800 --> 0:15:17.360 things like editorial cartoons and so. The U S Narcotic Farm, 0:15:17.440 --> 0:15:20.360 and in its early days it was called that. But 0:15:20.520 --> 0:15:23.640 after a while people began to realize that there's a 0:15:23.720 --> 0:15:27.240 sort of joke in that, and that is that what 0:15:27.360 --> 0:15:32.320 are they doing growing narcotics there? You know, poppies or 0:15:32.840 --> 0:15:36.280 marijuana or whatever it might be. Um And so they 0:15:36.920 --> 0:15:40.160 gradually kind of moved away from using the term farm, 0:15:40.240 --> 0:15:44.400 but the farm was already within the lore of the 0:15:44.480 --> 0:15:49.680 drug using population. And in when the farm opens to 0:15:49.880 --> 0:15:53.640 great fanfare, I mean, this was the US Congress's answer 0:15:53.800 --> 0:15:59.800 to the opium problem. Is this massive, beautiful, very large structure. 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:03.200 It's still there today. It's just a prison, but it's 0:16:03.280 --> 0:16:06.280 jointly run right by both the Bureau Prisons and the 0:16:06.400 --> 0:16:08.960 Public Health Division in the US government. Right, it's a 0:16:09.040 --> 0:16:11.960 joint enterprise of the two. So there's both the punishment 0:16:12.120 --> 0:16:15.440 side and there's the kind of rehab research. I kind 0:16:15.480 --> 0:16:19.440 of merged together in a kind of awkward sort of way, right, Yeah, 0:16:19.560 --> 0:16:23.000 And it's awkward in many ways because you can volunteer 0:16:23.080 --> 0:16:24.880 to go there. You can go up to the gates 0:16:24.960 --> 0:16:27.800 of the narcotic Farm and say, I'm a drug addict. 0:16:28.240 --> 0:16:31.000 I have papers from my doctor. And before the World 0:16:31.040 --> 0:16:33.280 War Two, most of the people who went to the 0:16:33.360 --> 0:16:36.800 narcotic farm, so a third of them are volunteering in 0:16:36.880 --> 0:16:39.680 that manner where they're just showing up seeking treatment and 0:16:39.840 --> 0:16:43.800 getting it um largely for free. If they could pay, 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:47.200 they were asked to pay. But it was a place 0:16:47.320 --> 0:16:52.000 where you might go if you were a drug user 0:16:52.520 --> 0:16:54.600 and you know, the snow is starting to fly in 0:16:54.640 --> 0:16:57.000 New York City and you don't really have a place 0:16:57.080 --> 0:16:59.840 to live. What we would call today a homeless or 0:17:00.040 --> 0:17:04.080 unhoused population often spent their winters at the narcotic Farm. 0:17:04.359 --> 0:17:06.520 But but I mean, you can think about it quite 0:17:06.640 --> 0:17:09.840 remarkable because here we have a place that's a prison, 0:17:10.440 --> 0:17:14.200 yet basically a third of the inmates are people who 0:17:14.520 --> 0:17:16.480 come knocked me at the door and say let me in. 0:17:16.680 --> 0:17:18.800 I mean, there are no other prisons that I'm aware 0:17:18.800 --> 0:17:23.280 of like that, right, And actually the other prisons right, 0:17:23.560 --> 0:17:26.240 Most of the people who went to Lexington had been 0:17:26.280 --> 0:17:30.680 incarcerated in prisons and jails and other places that were 0:17:30.760 --> 0:17:34.480 not devoted to UH curing the drug addict. And so 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:38.920 they thought of Lexington the Narcotic Farm as a country club, 0:17:39.280 --> 0:17:41.879 and in fact it became known very much as a 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:45.320 country club prison there. It is in the South, but 0:17:45.520 --> 0:17:50.560 it's not racially segregated, and it's not gender segregated after nine. 0:17:51.480 --> 0:17:54.480 So it's a strange institution. It's awkward in every way. 0:17:54.920 --> 0:17:57.680 So for the entire forty years that the Narcotic Farm 0:17:57.800 --> 0:18:03.080 operated UH ten at any given time. This is true 0:18:03.080 --> 0:18:08.680 of men as well as women. Were professionals, largely positions, 0:18:09.160 --> 0:18:12.800 largely people who had access to opiates or put their 0:18:12.880 --> 0:18:16.680 wives on them. And so you have a nurses and 0:18:17.000 --> 0:18:21.000 you know many many professionals who had greater access to 0:18:21.119 --> 0:18:25.359 opioids became habituated to them and ended up going to 0:18:25.760 --> 0:18:30.080 the narcotic Farm. UM. So it was a bizarre institution 0:18:30.119 --> 0:18:32.520 when you really think about it because it is so mixed. 0:18:32.920 --> 0:18:36.080 So in talking about the general population and we're talking 0:18:36.160 --> 0:18:39.320 about you know, they treated over a hundred thousand people 0:18:39.760 --> 0:18:43.000 in the time that they were operating. But you you 0:18:43.119 --> 0:18:47.480 really do see a kind of change in the pattern 0:18:48.160 --> 0:18:52.879 of who goes to the narcotic farm that reflects the 0:18:53.080 --> 0:18:57.639 changes in the pattern of who uses opioids. We'll be 0:18:57.720 --> 0:19:14.440 talking more after we hear this add you said it 0:19:14.480 --> 0:19:17.280 was regarded as something of a country club prisoner. They 0:19:17.320 --> 0:19:20.600 had all sorts of recreational facilities. They had all sorts 0:19:20.640 --> 0:19:23.120 of you know, nice ways of treating people, whether people 0:19:23.200 --> 0:19:26.720 got manicures and haircuts, there were social events, but you 0:19:26.880 --> 0:19:29.680 had gymnasiums, you had a golf course. I think you 0:19:29.760 --> 0:19:33.240 had a tennis court. Yeah, it's it's pretty interesting when 0:19:33.440 --> 0:19:35.800 when we looked at it um and I think Luke 0:19:35.880 --> 0:19:38.800 Walden and JP Olsen and I as we were trying 0:19:38.880 --> 0:19:41.800 to interpret these photographs that we were seeing in the 0:19:41.960 --> 0:19:44.240 archives and that we were trying to understand. Right, you 0:19:44.440 --> 0:19:48.840 see all kinds of recreational There was a bowling alley. 0:19:49.280 --> 0:19:52.879 They're bowling alleys in the narcotic farm. There's the second 0:19:53.040 --> 0:19:57.359 largest auditorium in the entire state of Kentucky for jazz concerts. 0:19:58.160 --> 0:20:00.879 And I'm sure there was some resent s mint, but 0:20:01.119 --> 0:20:04.800 it really looks like an American small town. You can 0:20:04.840 --> 0:20:07.399 see the mentality, right, it's kind of a city on 0:20:07.480 --> 0:20:12.080 a hill. This rolling hills of Kentucky, bluegrass. This is 0:20:12.200 --> 0:20:16.680 thoroughbred country, right, And they are farming. Everyone is, you know, 0:20:17.119 --> 0:20:21.480 they're they're harvesting vegetables, they're cutting the hay, they raise 0:20:23.440 --> 0:20:28.160 the pork. Products that are consumed at that facility are 0:20:28.640 --> 0:20:33.400 raised at that facility. They have all kinds of activities 0:20:33.960 --> 0:20:39.440 and they log the amount of time that UM their 0:20:39.480 --> 0:20:44.800 patient inmates spend at recreation, right, so they thousands of 0:20:44.880 --> 0:20:49.159 hours each year are recorded of people who are bowling 0:20:49.320 --> 0:20:53.639 or playing ping pong, or UM playing softball. There's a 0:20:53.680 --> 0:20:57.200 women's softball team, there's you know, there's there's there's every 0:20:57.320 --> 0:21:00.359 kind of recreation that they could a mad and how 0:21:00.440 --> 0:21:03.720 to fit in there. And that's because they are convinced 0:21:04.080 --> 0:21:09.280 very early on that UM, if people had better things 0:21:09.359 --> 0:21:12.560 to do with their time, they wouldn't use drugs. So 0:21:12.680 --> 0:21:17.480 the idea there is you find alternative reinforcers, activities that 0:21:17.640 --> 0:21:21.760 compel people, that make people feel part of something larger 0:21:22.000 --> 0:21:27.520 a community, whether it's basket weaving or whether it's um. 0:21:27.760 --> 0:21:30.600 You know, they had these outdoor concerts in the middle 0:21:30.680 --> 0:21:35.080 of the courtyard, and you know, they really tried to 0:21:35.359 --> 0:21:38.080 make sure that people were busy all the time. They 0:21:38.160 --> 0:21:40.720 had jobs. Everybody had a job, so you had to 0:21:40.800 --> 0:21:42.480 work and you had to play, and you had to sleep, 0:21:42.520 --> 0:21:47.159 and you had to eat. And that normalization project, and 0:21:47.240 --> 0:21:49.240 it really was it was like, we're going to take 0:21:49.320 --> 0:21:53.840 this institution and we're going to make an American small town, 0:21:54.200 --> 0:21:57.280 and we are going to um indicate to people how 0:21:57.400 --> 0:22:01.159 they could fit into that small town. You know. So 0:22:01.280 --> 0:22:04.879 it's a very interesting model and it's one that we 0:22:05.119 --> 0:22:08.680 to this day right have this idea that if we 0:22:08.760 --> 0:22:13.960 could provide alternative reinforcers, then people wouldn't use drugs and 0:22:14.000 --> 0:22:16.520 they wouldn't go back to using drugs. That turned out 0:22:16.720 --> 0:22:19.640 not to work. It turns out that the recidivism rates 0:22:19.680 --> 0:22:22.240 are off the charts. So it seems so that within 0:22:22.280 --> 0:22:25.200 the Arconic farm, does is it creates this place for 0:22:25.359 --> 0:22:30.359 people to chill out, gain some skills. Nobody's overdosing or 0:22:30.560 --> 0:22:33.520 dying there, right, And in fact, one of the elements 0:22:33.560 --> 0:22:36.280 I'm curious about is what was if two thirds of 0:22:36.359 --> 0:22:39.520 the people there have been sentenced under the federal drug laws, 0:22:39.600 --> 0:22:42.440 but one third are people who have showed up voluntarily, 0:22:43.000 --> 0:22:45.439 what was the dynamic like between the ones who are 0:22:45.480 --> 0:22:47.760 there voluntarily and the ones who were not. Yeah, there 0:22:47.880 --> 0:22:51.960 was very little differentiation between We call them the balls, 0:22:52.560 --> 0:22:56.440 and many of the balls will repeat customers um. In fact, 0:22:56.520 --> 0:22:59.520 they were called winders because they would wind in and 0:22:59.680 --> 0:23:02.200 wind doubt and then they would wind back. The one 0:23:02.240 --> 0:23:04.400 that we found who was there the most was there 0:23:04.480 --> 0:23:08.080 forty four times and on his forty fifth time. After 0:23:08.160 --> 0:23:12.440 that he didn't didn't return. But many people were there, 0:23:12.920 --> 0:23:15.800 maybe nine ten. I mean, we know to this day 0:23:16.000 --> 0:23:20.359 right that that treatment often doesn't work the first time, 0:23:21.040 --> 0:23:24.440 and that people do have to try multiple modalities. And 0:23:24.560 --> 0:23:26.119 one of the things that they tried to do with 0:23:26.160 --> 0:23:29.480 the narcotic Farm was they tried to provide under one 0:23:29.600 --> 0:23:33.680 roof UM multiple modalities of treatment. So they tried a 0:23:33.800 --> 0:23:36.880 lot of different things. The other thing that they really believed, 0:23:37.119 --> 0:23:40.920 in addition to the alternative reinforcers I either play the 0:23:41.000 --> 0:23:45.639 recreational opportunities UM. Everyone had a job and were they 0:23:45.680 --> 0:23:48.879 were trained for these jobs, and these jobs ranged from 0:23:48.960 --> 0:23:53.639 auto mechanics two woodworking to working of course in the 0:23:53.760 --> 0:23:56.880 cooking um and clean up in the kitchen. But they 0:23:56.960 --> 0:24:02.200 also included skills training, so for instance, photography and dark 0:24:02.359 --> 0:24:06.879 room work or printing or other kinds of highly skilled 0:24:06.920 --> 0:24:10.480 activities where you really could imagine people getting jobs afterwards. 0:24:10.800 --> 0:24:15.720 Were sewing, tailoring, various kinds of things of this kind, 0:24:15.800 --> 0:24:19.760 and these were at that time in these were progressive 0:24:19.960 --> 0:24:24.880 elements of prison reform. The Federal Eureau of Prisons came 0:24:24.960 --> 0:24:27.880 into being in nineteen thirty and it came into um 0:24:28.359 --> 0:24:31.639 being at a time when people were really thinking about, um, 0:24:31.840 --> 0:24:36.360 is it possible to make people who are incarcerated gain 0:24:36.480 --> 0:24:39.680 new skills or take on new responsibilities. And with that, 0:24:39.880 --> 0:24:43.200 in fact, UM you know, helped them in their lives 0:24:43.280 --> 0:24:46.840 after they left these institutions. And so that vocational training, 0:24:46.960 --> 0:24:51.760 vocational skills. Aspect of the narcotic farm UM which included 0:24:51.760 --> 0:24:56.359 agricultural labor, they had cows, and so there are lots 0:24:56.400 --> 0:24:59.560 and lots of stories about these city boys UM finding 0:24:59.600 --> 0:25:03.160 themselves out milking cows early in the morning and splashing 0:25:03.200 --> 0:25:06.159 around in the manure. Right hard hard to see how 0:25:06.240 --> 0:25:07.879 learning how to milk a cow isn't help you when 0:25:07.920 --> 0:25:10.280 you go back to New York City after that. But 0:25:10.400 --> 0:25:12.800 you know, you talked also in the book about how 0:25:12.920 --> 0:25:16.280 after World War Two there's a change in the attic population. 0:25:16.400 --> 0:25:19.359 It's less about older guys, and now you have the 0:25:19.440 --> 0:25:23.240 first youth heroin epidemic, and you have the children of immigrants, 0:25:23.320 --> 0:25:25.200