Soon to be Trump minister

Kennedy: “Heroin made me the best in my class”

The future Secretary's confused statements cast a shadow - is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. really fit to reform the US healthcare system?

(Bild: APA/AFP/Kena Betancur)

A worm ate parts of his brain, he vehemently opposes vaccinations, subscribes to conspiracy theories - and now the future US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is also downplaying heroin. He claimed in an interview that it had made him a model student. 

"I was very, very bad at school until I started taking drugs," Kennedy said in a video that has now resurfaced and is currently circulating on social networks. The statement was made back in July in an interview during Kennedy's own presidential campaign on the "Shawn Ryan Show".

If it still worked, I'd still take it.

Robert F. Kennedy über seinen Heroinkonsum

"Then I got top of the class"
During the podcast interview, the Democrat, who eventually gave up his ambitions to become president and went on to support Trump, recalled that drugs had improved his academic performance. "Then I got to the top of my class because my mind was so restless and restless and I couldn't sit still," Kennedy said of his past heroin use. "And if it still worked, I'd still be taking it."

Drug abuse ultimately like a "compulsion"
In the interview, Kennedy described his drug abuse as a "compulsion" that ultimately "erodes your whole life". Cocaine and heroin were his drugs of choice. In 1983, when he flew to rehab in Minnesota, he was arrested for heroin possession, he recalled. And added that it was the best thing that could have happened to him.

This event ultimately led to him getting sober. "The most demoralizing feature of this disease was my inability to keep contracts with myself," he said about the difficulties he had in overcoming his addiction.

Heroin use not a good idea
According to the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), heroin users typically experience a brief "high" after taking the drug and then enter a drowsy state in which "mental function is clouded, heart function slows, and breathing is also severely slowed, sometimes to the point that it can be life-threatening," and the NIDA adds that the slowed breathing can lead to permanent brain damage.

Kennedy, who is best known as an anti-vaccination campaigner, has often made headlines recently with controversial comments about what he could do as health minister.

Raw milk despite urgent bird flu warning
Among other things, Kennedy suggested that Americans should start consuming raw milk even though avian flu was found in batches of the unpasteurized beverage. He also declared his intention to remove fluoride from drinking water - claiming without evidence in an X-post (formerly Twitter) that it is "linked to arthritis, broken bones, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders and thyroid disease."