‘Tough love’: How RFK Jr.’s views on addiction could bring a new era of U.S. drug policy 

Despite the seemingly uncontroversial goal of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to “Make America Healthy Again,” many of his health care stances are deeply divisive: In the last two years alone, he has suggested that Covid-19 was genetically engineered to spare specific ethnicities, stated that radiation from cell phones causes cancer, and doubled down on the long-disproven claim that HIV does not cause AIDS. 

But at least one health care cause that has occupied much of his attention in 2024, in contrast, has major unifying potential: the addiction and opioid crisis. As a presidential candidate, Kennedy cast the issue as a symbol of the nation’s broader ills. He traveled the country with a film crew to make a documentary focused on addiction, sharing his own struggles with heroin and alcohol. He surrounded himself with doctors, recovery advocates, judges, and public health officials, seeking an answer to a question that has evaded three successive presidents: how can the U.S. bring its decades-long drug crisis to an end? 

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