Over the course of the 1970s, the Lincoln Detox People’s Program became a fixture of hope in the South Bronx, supporting thousands of people to detox from drugs. Mia Donovan’s 2020 documentary explores why this program was considered a threat to the political and social stability of the United States by sharing how Dr. Mutulu Shakur, along with fellow Black Panthers and the Puerto Rican Young Lords, combined community health with radical politics to create the first acupuncture detoxification program in the United States in 1973.

Gratitude and respect to Mia Donovan, DopeisDeath.com for permission to connect this work with ours.

Jenna Bliss’ 2018 documentary, The People’s Detox contemplates how the history of a revolutionary drug clinic reverberates through to contemporary notions of health & care. Through political education, the clinic examined the role of global politics in the influx of heroin into urban centers and the economic incentives of institutional protocols for drug treatment. With the introduction of acupuncture detoxification eventually replacing pharmaceutical treatments, it was not only the the walls of Lincoln hospital that were breached but the very apparatus of addiction and recovery.

Gratitude and Respect to Jenna Bliss for permission to connect this work with ours.