Fort Worth was once home to the only federally funded drug treatment program west of the Mississippi.
The Fort Worth Narcotic Farm, which treated patients from 1938 to 1971, was one of two hospital-prisons that promised a less punishment-focused approach for people who used drugs.
The farm housed federal prisoners, caught up in new drug laws that turned over-the-counter remedies like cocaine into contraband, as well as voluntary patients seeking treatment on their own terms.
Oklahoma State University history professor Holly Karibo’s new book, Rehab on the Range, is an in-depth history of the Fort Worth Narcotic Farm. She describes patients’ regimented lives of work and therapy, where they tended to livestock like chickens and dairy cows, grew vegetables, and trained in trades like shoe repair and garment manufacturing.
Jazz musicians, who were at one point well-represented on the farm, even put on concerts. “We cooked pretty good,” pianist Hampton Hawes recalled of a jam session there.
Despite the promises of more freedom on the farm, there were still bars on the windows and guards at the doors. Karibo spoke with KERA about her new book and the fundamental tension in a facility that existed for both treatment and punishment.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How did the idea for the narcotic farms come about, and why did the federal government open them?
It really emerged as a result of what were some of the unintended effects of the first federal drug laws. In 1914, you have the passage of the Harrison Narcotics Act, which essentially made a wide variety of drugs illegal to possess without a prescription.
Drugs that people could buy over-the-counter — opiates, cocaine and so on — now were controlled substances. And so what you see happen is a large underground market of drug users emerges, and they begin filling federal prisons, which were really quite new institutions at the in the first decades of the 20th century.
Lawmakers become really concerned about the impact of drug users on prison populations. They wanted to see some sort of solution that would get them out of places like Leavenworth Penitentiary and put into their own institutions where they could get both treatment and punishment for their transgressions.
The providers talked about the people there as patients, and it was kind of presented as this very therapeutic environment. But at the end of the day, it was also still a prison. What was the tension between those two realities?
There were bars on the windows, for example. There were signs of the carceral setting, certainly, that you could see. A little less prominent than at Lexington [the government’s other narcotic farm in Kentucky]. But ultimately it was part of the institution. They hired guards to maintain order and control.
This creates the tension between patients. In studies of former patients there, one thing they really often do complain about with the institution is that they couldn't relate to some of the people they were in group therapy with. They didn't share the lived experiences. A voluntary patient, for example, might not have the same background as a prisoner patient.
The other development that I really trace, that researchers at the narcotic farm were frustrated by, is the rise of what they called a prison culture within the institution. Very much like you would at federal prisons, you had social hierarchies emerge. You had racial and ethnic divides among patients.
And they called it "going along with the program." Like, basically you just went to therapy to get out of work, but you weren't really supposed to take it seriously or you were considered “square.” And that really undermined in a lot of ways the therapeutic value of the institution.
You draw from patient-written newsletters where people are pretty honest about how they feel about being there. How did the patients themselves feel about the narcotic farm, and did it help them at all?
Some people, it really probably literally saved their lives at the time that they ended up there.
When you get to the patient newsletters, there's a whole range of responses. One saying, “We just want them to close the place down,” and another one saying, "You know, what I like best are the nurses” — sort of talking about the gender dynamics that emerge between the largely male patient population and young women who were working at the institution.
Some of it’s more benign, like, “Didn't hurt me any.” it's really a mixed bag.
One of the things that happens, I think, that ultimately undermines the therapeutic value, is by the late 1950s, there were longer mandatory minimum sentences passed at the federal level. And so rather than staying six months, which was sort of the ideal time envisioned, people are staying four, five, six years. And that ultimately then undermines their willingness to at all participate in the therapy program, when this is just another form of incarceration for them.
Why did the Fort Worth Narcotic Farm shut down in 1971?
This institution very much represented the mid-century faith in centralized bureaucracy and the role of the expert. By the 1960s, people were really pushing back against that in terms of mental health institutions.
This idea was that addicts should be treated in their own communities, not segregated out to this large, centralized institution. The debates over closing the institution emerge in part because these were broader trends already happening.
But frankly, from the very first annual report of the Lexington Narcotic Farm that opens in 1935 — Fort Worth opens in 1938, three years later — in those first opening reports, they were saying recidivism rates are high. In other words, the number of people returning to drugs was high, and that they weren't getting the federal funding they needed to adequately run the program. So it was almost like a known secret that this just, numbers-wise, wasn’t proving effective for decades.
There was real pushback in Texas against closing the facility, because people knew if you closed this down, the odds that we're actually going to get funding to replace it are probably slim.
Ultimately, they lost that battle, and it was transferred to the Bureau of Prisons, where it served as basically a minimum-security medical facility, which it remains today.
What parallels do you see surrounding discussions of addiction during the era of narcotic farms, and discussions of addiction today?
A ton. So many of the debates that they were having in the 1920s are happening in the 2020s.
[There's] this question about, do you punish people for drug use? Do you punish them for crimes they commit in order to get drugs, or to get money to get to buy drugs?
The demonization of, for example, Mexico, as the source of our drug problem. Rather than seeing it as a demand side, we see it as a supply side problem, in many cases.
It's easier to blame your neighbor — or to blame China, for example, with the fentanyl crisis — than it is to take a look at why it is Americans need so many drugs, frankly.
In some ways it's sort of depressing, because I feel like the narcotic farm ends up as a full circle sort of story. We’re back to these same conversations.
That's not to say we don't understand more about addiction. We put more energy into understanding it, certainly, than we did 50 years ago. But we certainly haven't solved the problem.
Got a tip? Email Miranda Suarez at msuarez@kera.org. You can follow Miranda on X @MirandaRSuarez.
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