# 22

Southeast Asian botanical substance known as Kratom banned by DEA without public comment; active ingredient deadens pain at Opioid receptor sites while not slowing respiration but has produced hospital admissions at ERs.

A September 30, 2016 ban, administratively imposed by the DEA, on the substance Kratom has added another example to the debate regarding real and perceived pain, profiteer's pursuit of cash and government agency's efforts to protect the public.

In a perfect world in the USA, the FDA and DEA would be our guardians and they would ensure that a minimum amount of sudden and unexpected deaths occurred by performing qualitative and quantitative analysis of all marketed substances - especially in behalf of persons in pain who are desperate.  In this same perfect world, persons around the globe who seek profit in the USA while circumventing the regulatory agencies as they sell proscribed/regulated substances would rightly be seen as the enemy of all potential users/abusers.  Finally, the perfect world in the USA would have physicians prescribing regulated substances and Americans only using such substances in dosages their doctors prescribed.  Under this schema, fewer overdose deaths would occur and life would rightly be preserved; pain addressed.

There will always be people who seeks cash by selling substances which permit adults to self-administer substances which can kill them.  While it may not always be suicide, when such adult users/self-administrators skirt the regulators, they have to know that they are circumventing the very guardians the taxpayers established to protect them.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidkroll/2016/08/31/dea-argues-that-public-comment-is-unnecessary-before-kratom-ban/#69d6c11b388b