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Sto caricando le informazioni... The Narcotic Farm: The Rise and Fall of America's First Prison for Drug Addictsdi Nancy D. Campbell
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The United States Narcotic Farm opened in 1935 in the rolling hills of Kentucky horse country. Portrayed in the press as everything from a "New Deal for the drug addict" to a "million-dollar flophouse for junkies," the sprawling art deco facility was equal parts federal prison, treatment center, working farm, and research laboratory. Its mission was to rehabilitate addicts, who were increasingly criminalized and incarcerated as a result of strict new drug laws, and to discover a cure for opiate addiction. This richly illustrated book offers an important history of this progressive yet ultimately doomed experiment. "Narco," as the locals called it, pioneered new treatments such as prescribing methadone to manage heroin withdrawal and developed drugs that blocked the action of opiates. The coed institution admitted federal prisoners as well as volunteers who checked themselves in for treatment, and through the years it hosted several legendary jazz musicians, including Chet Baker and Sonny Rollins, as well as actor Peter Lorre and writer William S. Burroughs. The facility ultimately closed in 1975 under a cloud as Congress learned that Narco researchers had recruited patients as test subjects for CIA-funded LSD experiments from 1953 to 1962, part of the notorious project MK-Ultra. Featuring a new foreword by Sam Quinones, The Narcotic Farm offers a vital perspective on US drug policy, addiction, and incarceration as the nation struggles with a new opioid epidemic. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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 Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni...GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)365.667290973Social sciences Social problems and services; associations Penal & related institutions Inmates Services to prisonersClassificazione LCVotoMedia: (3.63)
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I first heard of this book while reading Sam Quinones' Dreamland - up to then I had absolutely no clue that this place even existed. The United States Narcotic Farm opened in 1935, just outside of Lexington, Kentucky; it was, as the book notes,
"an anomaly, an institution where male and female convicts arrested for drugs did time along with volunteers who checked themselves in for treatment."
In the 1920s, increasingly-strict drug laws and "aggressive enforcement" led to addicts being sent to prison "in droves," where they proved troublesome -- bringing drugs inside and getting non-addict prisoners hooked. The authors note that by the late 1920s, about "a third of all federal prisoners were doing time on drug charges." Social progressives of the time also took issue with the arrest of addicts, believing it to be "unjust" - so in 1929 two "government bureaucrats" lobbied for a measure that would create prisons just for convicted addicts, and by 1932, the construction of first of these institutions (the other in Ft. Worth) was underway. Its administration fell under both the US Public Health Service and the Federal Bureau of Prisons - and on the day it opened the first director, Dr. Lawrence Kolb stated that addicts would not be sent to prison for what was basically "a weakness," but they would be able to receive
"the best medical treatment that science can afford in an atmosphere designed to rehabilitate them spiritually, mentally, and physically."
The book and the documentary together detail the story of Narco (as it was known by the locals) from its beginning in 1935 through its final days forty years later. Some interesting highlights of its history include a few notables who passed through its doors -- both William S. Burroughs senior and junior, as well as a host of jazz musicians including Chet Baker, Lee Morgan, and Sonny Rollins. Both Burroughs, father and son, wrote books about their time at Lexington: Senior in his Junkie, where there's an entire section about him signing himself in," and Junior with his Kentucky Ham (which I'm planning to read soon) detailing his time as a patient there.
Good book -- eye opening to say the least, especially when some very disturbing facts about the research going on there are revealed. (