Editor’s Note: In part the confusion is a result of the fact that DEA has not released a copy of its letter to HHS as so requested by CRE within days of DEA’s Notice of Intent to ban kratom. [There must be some reader interest in this topic in that CRE received nearly 1,000 comments on the post.]
After the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) announced an “emergency” ban on kratom at the end of August, a spokesman for the agency said “our goal is to make sure this is available.” The spokesman, Melvin Patterson, also told The Washington Post kratom does not belong in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, the law’s most restrictive category, even though that is where the DEA had just put it.
Patterson added that kratom, which the DEA says has “no currently accepted medical use,” is “at a point where it needs to be recognized as medicine.” Confused? You’re not alone. The DEA’s ban on kratom, a pain-relieving leaf from Southeast Asia, shows how blithely and arbitrarily the government interferes with our freedom to control our own brains and bloodstreams.
Read entire article.
I wonder what the holdup is? Why doesn’t our government make the DEA release the letter?
Btw, Assistant Director Karen B. DeSalvo of HHS is not responding to any inquiries by the People… !!!
This appears to be another case of two people acting alone against the government and it’s citizens.
This sounds like the rhetorical fumbling of an agency that believes it is beyond scrutiny, and never for a moment expected to have to justify this ban to anyone. It is arrogance of the highest order. The bully confronted at last by his victims, cornered and bewilidered at their unity. The kratom community was a quiet one for years, but we have awoken. We are infinitely larger than I ever imagined. We are in every state of the union and every profession. Every race, income and creed. And we will protect ourselves and our families from those who threaten us.
We will fight until this cruel, misguided and senseless ban on an herbal supllement is stopped once and for all. This has gone too far.
Perfectly said. Thank you
I think another thing that has caught the DEA off guard, along with those mentioned directly above (all of which makes one ponder, “who is responsible for due diligence, if anyone, over there at the DEA?”) is the demographic of the average consumer of kratom. The broadest part of that bell curve, easily, is a highly educated, law abiding, professional adult of middle age with not only a high level of maturity and responsibility, but a capability to make informed decisions on what they put into their bodies (no parental/governmental needed, thank you) and an ability to effectively organize and resist a clear assault on their freedoms with quite robust results (as we have seen thus far).
You are a weapon for the cause. Thank you
I cannot help but to think that the DEA and HHS truly do not care about the public. The healthy leaf Kratom in it’s whole form gets people off of addiction to engineered designer pharmaceutical opioids and street drugs, yet they want to ban Kratom to keep people hooked on those drugs?
Additionally, many people without addictions living healthy lifestyles also choose Kratom over prescription antidepressants and pain killers, but the DEA and HHS are jealous over this? With Kratom getting more and more people off of controlled drugs, apparently someones somewhere are unhappy that they are losing money.
Someones wants to keep money flowing into engineered designer pharmaceutical anti-depressants, opioids, pain killers, AND street drugs.
No doubt would a controlled Black Market for the proposed newly-turned-street-“drug” Kratom appear after a ban, and someones would also be making big money on that in more ways than one, and at the same time put a stop to and at least double the money that they are already losing.
Someones somewhere must be so frustrated that they are losing money over the public’s free choice to use the beneficial and harmless leaf Kratom that they are seeing dollar signs, and seeing red.
As supporters of retaining our own free choice to our own personal use of Kratom leaf in it’s whole healthful and uncontrolled form, we do not care about someones Corporate or Personal Interests.
At this point it is rather difficult to tell whos specifically are behind this proposed sneaky quick-slip ban, however, a suggestion to those someones would be to perhaps find a more honest and unintrusive financial venture, instead of banning and controlling a beneficial harmless leaf that helps so many.
(pluralisms mine)
Keep Kratom entirely legal!
Thank you CRE for continuing to follow this as it develops. Has anyone requested the letter pursuant to a FOIA request?
I find it very odd they are dragging their feet on such a simple request.
I too am wondering of the status of that request for the HHS letter. Can anyone provide more information?
Their comments on medicinal value are null and void. Studies funded by the US Govt have proven it’s value! They know it has value.. Just not the kind they want.
http://www.google.com/patents/US20100209542
DEA chairman Chuck Rosenberg has more experience lobbying for the freaking pharmaceutical industry than he does in any law enforcement role. He’s not a compassionate cop who cares about his fellow Americans. Chuck Rosenberg has been getting paid millions of dollars by Big Pharma over the past few years to protect their deadly billion dollar synthetic drugs, while demonizing natural plants like Kratom and Cannabis.
The fact that we have this powerful pharmaceutical lobbyist as the head of America’s most powerful law enforcement organization speaks volumes about the level of corruption at the DEA and FDA. We cannot trust *anything* they tell us, when it’s so obvious they are bought and paid for by Big Pharma. Shameful, sickening and scary as hell.
Chuck Rosenberg, Melvin Patterson and the rest of the DEA will continue to stall on the Kratom issue and offer the kratom community hope that they are actually listening, until the perfect time arrives to publish their ban in the Federal Register with the least amount of publicity and backlash from the public.
Here are the dates the DEA is probably considering to publish their outlandish ban against Kratom in the Federal Register:
– November 7th (night before the presidential election)
– November 8th (day of the presidential election)
– November 23rd (day before Thanksgiving)
– December 24th (day before Christmas)
– December 31st (New Year’s Eve)
That’s how they roll. They are absolutely addicted to money and driven by greed.
That will not stall any legal backlash from the community who is watching this like a hawk. The AKA is well aware of this and, I’m sure preparing a number of effective contingencies in response. They have advisors with intimate knowledge of Chuck and his methods. The somke screen will not last for long, I believe, should you be right.