In America, government has evolved into it's most natural state; that is to say, being influence and force that can be bought, over many generations, especially since the creation of an extra-governmental cartel of banksters with a monopoly on the issuance of fiat currency, and especially since that currency became digitized, people and groups of people (industry lobbyists, corporate lobbyists, etc) have purchased government force and protection to shield them from market forces, destroy competition, socialize losses, and deflect fraud, theft, environmental destruction, and other crimes. This disease has metastasized and spread to encompass every aspect of our society; not only almost every industry, but every social institution: government, military, education, media, etc. There are innumerable examples to highlight this fact, but in the most current of events we can look to the government attack on kratom as an exhibit.
The FDA, like every fascist unelected alphabet bureaucracy that exists in America, is an adjunct of the industries and corporations we are told it protects us from. In this case, they are staffed by lawyers, lobbyists, and/or former executives of the industrial pharmaceutical and food industries. I can remember the liberal angst and confusion when Obama appointed "former" Monsanto vice president Michael Taylor to a senior position at the FDA. What's hilariously not funny is that many people, when discussing the possibility of a stateless society, wax hysterical that without government we'd all be eating poisoned food, oblivious to the fact that the people they think they need government to keep from poisoning them are in control of the very agencies they think are protecting them. There is simply no way to prevent this corruption from occurring; it is inherent to politics.
Kratom is a harmless plant related to coffee. It has naturally occurring alkaloids that, in some strains, mimic, to a very limited degree, the opioids the FDA, DEA, and justice department pay lip service to controlling - government black ops playing a major roll in the epidemic to begin with. Many opioid addicts, in fact, are self-medicating with kratom to help them kick an addiction that carries with it a very painful and sickening withdrawal period. These testimonies are nearly endless. Yet these government agencies wish to label it Schedule 1, meaning it has zero medicinal value. It should be noted that marijuana is Schedule 1, yet the FDA allowed pharmaceutical companies to synthesize THC so they could market it as an FDA-approved drug. Why grow the real thing for practically free when a pharmaceutical company can make an enormous profit selling you its lab-created substitute?
Kratom, like marijuana, is a threat to the FDA's clients in the pharmaceutical industry on multiple levels. First and foremost, it cuts into their profits. Not only are prescription drugs like methadone expensive, but they are more horribly addicting, their withdrawal more painful, than the drugs users are addicted to in the first place. They trade one horrible addiction for another FDA controlled and regulated one, which pharmaceutical corporations profit greatly from. Second, it promotes the blasphemous idea that people can use natural products to help themselves, without direction from an establishment quack doctor or any expensive FDA-approved drugs.
It is useful to consider that it is actually the law in this country that only an FDA-approved drug can treat or cure an illness. The FDA has gone so far as the threaten Cheerios for claiming a diet high in fiber such as found in their cereal reduces the risk of heart disease. Wrong. Only an FDA-approved drug can do such a thing. And of course, nothing found in nature would ever be approved by the FDA, because their clients in the pharmaceutical industry cannot control and profit from it. After all, if my doctor, illegally, tells me I have a vitamin D deficiency that's contributing to an illness - and there are few illnesses that cannot be attributed at least in part to a vitamin D deficiency - all I need do is expose myself to sunlight for a few minutes a day. Or eat some fish skin or mushrooms, or take a vitamin D3 supplement.
Thus, the FDA attacked kratom using horrible "science", disinformation and outright lies. Perhaps the most egregious was linking 44 deaths to kratom use. First and foremost, compared to the number of people using it - an estimated 5 million people - and relative to other benign substances which kill far more, 44 is a statistically insignificant number. Second, 44 people died with kratom in their system. There is no direct link between kratom and their cause of death. Very likely all of these people drank water that day. Many of them likely ate eggs. Perhaps some of them drank soda. They also claim that kratom has the same effect on the opioid receptors of the brain as drugs like heroine or oxycontin. Cheese has similar effects. Shall we ban cheese? Ban all the things?
According to pharmacologist David Kroll, the FDA report
- Failed to read 20 years of published scientific literature on alkaloids present in the kratom plant, Mitragyna speciosa.
- Failed to demonstrate any mastery of current research on the biochemical pharmacology of opioids.
- Was overly reliant on unpublished data from a computational model in the absence of direct, experimental confirmation.
- Made safety conclusions based on confirmation bias and a poor assessment of adverse reaction reports where kratom or its constituents were present.
- Also made safety conclusions in the absence of considering the impact on public health if kratom were banned.
- Concluded that the substance has no medical benefit in the absence of a prospective clinical trial for any indication with a well-qualified kratom product or purified kratom alkaloid.
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