Regulatory Watchdog Calls On DEA To Halt Kratom Ban, Calls On OMB Intervention
On September 12, the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness, an independent think tank and regulatory watchdog organization, wrote an open letter to the DEA regarding the notoriously corrupt and rights-crushing agency’s recent ban on kratom. In this letter, the CRE has made a number of recommendations to the DEA that would at least put an element of logic to the agency’s actions.
The CRE points out that the DEA’s policy on kratom is in conflict with the policy of a number of other federal agencies and, thus, the legality of kratom falls under the jurisdiction of the Office of Management and Budget whose job it is to settle inter-agency conflicts of policy.
The letter reads:
The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) has been described as the cockpit of the regulatory state. It is an organization that has a statutory mandate to manage and oversee the flow of regulatory actions taken by federal agencies. In the discharge of these duties OIRA is often involved in one-on-one discussions with agency personnel to resolve potential conflicts with OMB personnel.
However, in this instance, the DEA action to ban kratom, the conflict is considerably wider in scope. In this instance there is a sharp disagreement among a number of federal agencies. Consequently if there were ever a time for an OMB intervention this is it.
The CRE’s letter also calls into question the shaky “science” used by the DEA in order to push its ban when it states:
‘The DEA’s August 31, 2016 Federal Register notice placing Mitragynine and 7-Hydroxymitragynine into Schedule I5 highlights the out of context observation that the “consumption of kratom individually,or in conjunction with alcohol or other drugs, is of serious concern as it can lead to severe adverse effects and death.’ The FR notice, however, left out the crucial supporting data that is necessary to understand the information provided by DEA and to it place in a policy context. Earlier this year, the peer-reviewed neuroscience journal Brain Research Bulletin published a survey of the literature on traditional and non-traditional uses of Mitragynin which found that,
‘While several cases of toxicity and death have emerged in the West, such reports have been non-existent in South East Asia where kratom has had a longer history of use. We highlight the possible reasons for this as discussed in the literature. More importantly, it should be borne in mind that the individual clinical casereports emerging from the West that link kratom use to adverse reactions or fatalities frequently pertained to kratom used together with other substances. Therefore, there is a danger of these reports being used to strengthen the case for legal sanction against kratom. This would be unfortunate since the experiences from South East Asia suggest considerable potential for therapeutic use among people who use drugs.’
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