RFK Jr. unveils plan to ban eight artificial food dyes by 2026
Eight artificial dyes will be banned from medications and the nation’s food supply by the end of 2026, Health Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said.
In a speech at the Illicit Drug Summit in Nashville, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that his policy perspectives are influenced by the 14-year heroin addiction he overcame.
Kennedy delivered his speech to thousands of health care, law enforcement and business officials on Thursday near the end of the four-day convention that focused on finding multidisciplinary solutions to America’s drug addiction crisis.
The speech comes as Kennedy Jr. faces scrutiny for divisive views on the food industry, autism and vaccine skepticism. His speech was interrupted several times by individual hecklers who were escorted out of the room to cheers from the crowd.
“I know that the only way I stay sober is through taking responsibility for my daily actions,” Kennedy said. “I accept the things I can’t control and try to practice gratitude for them. I can have control over my behavior, my daily conduct, but not the world around me.”
Kennedy recounts experience
By his own account, RFK Jr.’s first experience with drugs happened in the summer following his father’s assassination in 1968. He took the hallucinogen LSD at a party, and while walking home later, he was introduced to opioids by his neighbors.
“They said: ‘Try this,’ and it was a line of crystal meth,” he said. “I took it, and all my problems went away. My addiction came on full force. By the end of the summer, I was shooting heroin, which was my drug of choice the next 14 years.”
His recovery began after he was arrested in 1983 and sought treatment.
“I knew I needed a spiritual awakening,” he said. “I did not want to be that person.”
Kennedy says America is struggling
During his speech, Kennedy said that America is struggling with faith and hope.
Solving the addiction crisis requires a variety of interventions, including suboxone and methadone treatment, readily available Narcan intervention for overdose cases, and fentanyl detectors, among other practical strategies, he said.
Ultimately, he said, those “nuts and bolts” strategies won’t solve the opioid crisis in America.
“We need to really focus on reestablishing historic ties to the community,” he said. “We have this whole generation of kids who lost hope in their future.”
He said he supports banning cell phones in schools as a way to improve connections for young people in the community.
“The (Alcoholics Anonymous) 12 Steps are about overcoming isolation and reestablishing our connection with the community and dealing with your own character defects, even learning to love them,” he said.
Not the first time
Thursday’s speech was not the first time Kennedy had been upfront about his previous struggles with narcotics.
Back in July 2024, Kennedy told attendees at a Socrates in the City gathering that his previous heroin addiction had changed his outlook on life.
“I was never an atheist — ever. I was raised in a deeply religious family, and I integrated that,” said Kennedy. “My dad was killed when I was 14. I became a heroin addict when I was 15. … When you’re … living against conscience, which is what happens when you’re an addict, you tend to push any kind of notion of God off over the periphery of your horizon.”
Kennedy said that he “had to change at a deep, fundamental way, who I was, because I didn’t want to be an addict, but just be white-knuckling it and being miserable all the time — wanting the drug. … I knew that was going to require a spiritual awakening.”
Contributing: Terry Mattingly, Wichita Falls Times Record News
Fernando Cervantes Jr. is a trending news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected] and follow him on X @fern_cerv_.