A Geek With Guns

Chronicling the depravities of the State.

DEA Decides to Generate More Revenue

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While the government claims the war on drugs is being waged to protect the people, anybody with a brain realizes that it’s about generating revenue. Many of the drugs prohibited by the war, such as cannabis, are far less dangerous than the drugs that remain legal, such as alcohol. However, the war on drugs has opened the door for civil forfeiture, an exponential increase in slave labor, widespread surveillance, and heavily armed revenue generators law enforcers.

New drugs are being added to the prohibited list every year. Each one of those new drugs is another opportunity for the State to steal more wealth and kidnap more slave laborers. This year the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) wants to add kratom to Schedule I:

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is moving to place the herbal supplement kratom on its list of Schedule I drugs, effectively banning a naturally occurring psychoactive substance that some say holds promise as a therapy for opioid addiction.

The DEA, in a notice published in the Federal Register this week, said it wants to include two active kratom ingredients in its most restrictive classification of drugs with high potential for abuse and no known medical benefit, signaling that the government considers the plant as dangerous as heroin. The scheduling move would last for two years, with a possible extension of an additional year, and would go into effect at the end of September.

Kratom, like cannabis, is a plant, not some chemical concoction that has to be synthesized. This means that the DEA is effectively waging another war on nature. The advantage of this, to the DEA, is that it can’t win a war against nature so the struggle against the kratom menace would be a perpetual revenue stream for the agency. Also like cannabis, kratom is used medicinally:

Kratom is made from the leaves of Mitragyna speciosa, a Southeast Asian tree related to coffee, and has been consumed in Asia for millennia, typically as a tea or powder. The herb contains alkaloids that appear to activate opioid receptors in the brain and reduce pain. Although most opioids have sedative qualities, low to moderate doses of kratom serve as a mild stimulant.

The advantage of targeting a medicinal plant is that people who use kratom to treat their pain are likely to ignore the prohibition so they can continue living a less painful existence. That means the DEA has a good pool of victims it can exploit for cash and slave labor.

Of course the DEA is citing the usual crap about addiction, health effects, etc. However, all of those things apply to alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs that aren’t prohibited. Furthermore, Asian countries have been using kratom for ages to no widespread negative effect. And even if kratom has serious side-effects they’re far less deadly than law enforcers burning babies with flashbang grenades, shooting family pets, and beating people to within an inch of their lives.

Written by Christopher Burg

September 2nd, 2016 at 10:00 am