In recent weeks, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made disparaging statements regarding people with autism and started a push to phase out food dyes, claiming they cause chronic diseases and neurological disorders. That’s in addition to signaling that he might roll back COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for children. His plans to discontinue services for LGBTQ youth who call national suicide and crisis hotline 988 recently came to light as well.
But Kennedy kept his comments on topic during the Rx and Illicit Drug Summit at Nashville’s Gaylord Opryland Resort on Thursday. Kennedy was the keynote speaker at the April 24 event, which also featured opening remarks by U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn and two panels led by Tennessee Department of Health Commissioner Ralph Alvarado.
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Kennedy’s addition to the event was announced April 22, after the conference had already gotten underway.
During his talk, the HHS secretary focused on his personal experience with addiction, which began when he was 15 years old — in 1969, he shared, in the months following his father Robert Kennedy’s assassination. He said his drug of choice was heroin for 14 years.
“For me, my solution for trauma was I felt like I was born with an empty hole inside myself that I had to fill with things outside of myself, and those are the only things that worked for me,” Kennedy said during his speech. “And every addict feels that way, in one way or another, that they have to fix what’s wrong with them, and the only thing that works is drugs.”
He credits his sobriety to a 12-step program he entered in 1983 following an arrest. He told the audience that he still attends recovery meetings, as he has almost every day for 42 years.
Kennedy’s statements veered at times into something resembling a sermon, as he quoted theologian C.S. Lewis and ended his address with “God bless you.”
“When you get up in the morning, you have to ask one question, you have to say, ‘Reporting for duty, sir,’ and then you have to ask one question and say one prayer,” Kennedy said. “Please make it useful to another human being today.”
He also made jokes, including about his first LSD experience. “I had a deep interest in paleontology,” he said. “I said to the guy, ‘If I take that, will I see dinosaurs?’ And he said, ‘You might.’”
Alexis Pleus, executive director of Truth Pharm
But Kennedy did mention the importance of pragmatic fixes for addiction, including the use of suboxone, methadone and naltrexone — drugs that help curb cravings for opioids — and the overdose-reversal drug naloxone (commonly known by the name brand Narcan).
Under RFK Jr.’s leadership at HHS, more than 10,000 people lost their jobs and $11 billion in grant funding was slashed. In addition, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration is set to merge into a new organization called the Administration for a Healthy America as part of a restructuring of HHS that’s expected to eliminate 20,000 federal employees. On the same day as Kennedy’s Nashville speaking engagement, Metro Nashville brought a lawsuit against Kennedy and HHS, arguing the funding cuts are unconstitutional in nature. The city joined three other local governments and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in filing the lawsuit in a Washington, D.C., federal court.
On Thursday, Kennedy said HHS has $4 billion to apply toward addiction treatment.
“I would encourage you all to think broadly about what our mission is,” he said. “It’s not just about making sure every cop and every paramedic has [naloxone] — that’s important. It’s not just a prevention on the border — that’s important. It’s not just making sure that every addict, when they have those moments, when they’re willing to ask for help, that there’s a rehab ready for them to go to — that is critically important. There are bigger issues. How to restore our families. How do we restore that commitment to the community?”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks at the Rx and Illicit Drug Summit at Nashville’s Gaylord Opryland Resort, April 24, 2025
Absent from his remarks, however, were “healing farms” — a key point of Kennedy’s failed presidential campaign — where people live and work while recovering from addiction. Some factions of both those types of communities (which he covered in his documentary) and 12-step programs do not accept people using suboxone and other opioid-preventative drugs.
There were at least three interruptions during Kennedy’s nearly 40-minute presentation. At times it was difficult to decipher whether the audience was clapping in support of protesters, or in support of them being escorted away. One protester was Alexis Pleus, executive director of Truth Pharm, a Binghamton, N.Y.-based nonprofit that provides naloxone training and fentanyl testing in addition to advocacy work. She and a small group, also representing Moms United to End the War on Drugs, traveled to Nashville and purchased access to the event to protest funding cuts after hearing of Kennedy’s inclusion.
“For him to stand up there and give a speech about recovery when what he’s doing is going to prevent so many people from entering recovery in the middle of an overdose epidemic is just so wrong,” Pleus told the Scene.
She takes issue with healing farms, saying they are “using people who are addicted and marginalized and struggling in the world for free labor.”
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The Gaylord Opryland conference was a contrast from some of Kennedy’s Nashville appearances in the past. Just over a year ago, he visited Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium as a presidential candidate. He told a few jokes in his 10 minutes onstage, hours late for the fundraising “Night of Country and Comedy,” which featured Russell Brand and Rob Schneider. He also made an appearance at last summer’s Bitcoin2024 conference. (Before that, the last time the Scene covered the lawyer-turned-politician was in 2011 for a documentary on mountaintop removal mining.)
Kennedy said last week that God speaks to him through people, even those who may flip him off. At one point, an attendee yelled an aptly timed, “Fuck you,” and Kennedy replied, “Thank you very much.”
Part of the audience stood and applauded.
Hamilton Matthew Masters contributed reporting.
