The kratom revolution could learn a lot from the medical marijuana success story. We can save ourselves a lot of precious time, money, and effort by choosing the most efficient strategy to take us to full legal acceptance by the “powers that be”.
Medical marijuana has not gone through the official FDA process of doing the paperwork — and handing over the millions of paper dollars — to get itself formally approved as a safe and effective remedy for anything. And yet, in 23 of the United States, plus the District of Columbia(!), marijuana is being prescribed and is being openly dispensed and the federal government has backed off their enforcement campaign.
Four U.S. states, plus D.C., have also decriminalized possession and sale of marijuana (aka, “cannabis”) and are doing (or are preparing to do) a booming business. And polls show the majority of U.S. citizens are okay with this.
I believe the same thing can be done with kratom if we can get legislators to stop kowtowing to Big Pharma’s campaign donations and start paying attention to the best and most cost-effective methods of caring for America’s health, with herbs such as kratom and medical marijuana, as well as scientifically-proven medical nutrient supplementation.
(Even recreational use of cannabis and kratom have a lot more going for it — in terms of safety — than do alcohol, tobacco, and pharmaceutical painkillers, as our “Drugs of Choice”.)
For those who aren’t familiar with kratom, a little background before we get into my argument.
Kratom is the leaf of a tree that grows best in the jungles of Southeast Asia. It has been used there as a folk medicine for hundreds and probably thousands of years. With that many years of human use of this herb, these simple natives have a good idea of the safety and which types of leaves produce the effects they desire.
The kratom leaves are chewed by laborers and farmers or made into a strong tea. It is commonly used like we use coffee, a tree to which it is related — although kratom contains no caffeine.
Kratom is a far more complex herb than coffee, with more than 25 alkaloids, some of which stimulate, some ease muscle tension and pain, some lower blood pressure, some are beneficial for treating diabetes symptoms and reducing blood sugar.
My point is that, from my horseback analysis, kratom is a healthy tool for me to use to enhance my productivity, alertness, comfort and intuition. My body tells me it is safe and harmless if used in moderation.
The people of southern Thailand have used kratom extensively and for a long time. They would know if there was some innate danger that was going to surface after many years of daily kratom use. They are not stupid.
They do have some interesting insights about users of marijuana, compared to users of kratom. They believe that men who use kratom make better husbands than those who who habitually use marijuana. This is because kratom gives energy and fuels activity, as well as relieving pain, where the marijuana buzz generally leads more toward introspection and inactivity.
That is the general popular opinion in Thailand, where both herbs are used commonly. My point is only that kratom has very different effects (it is not a “high”) and has potentially a much wider application in the USA than does cannabis.
Thai, Malaysian, Japanese, and American scientists have done research on the kratom effects, both in the laboratory and in sociological studies of the long-term users’ health. Their findings are encouragingly positive.
Science also knows a lot about the uses and abuses of marijuana. Why is it the subject of so much argument? I’ll tell you why.
Our medical system of knowledge has allowed itself to be taken over by a faction of scientists who are promoting the agenda of the pharmaceutical industry. Every molecule must be studied in isolation from every other molecule and alkaloid in an herb, with the intention of turning a slightly modified copy of that alkaloid into a new patented drug, owned by the pharmaceutical company that pays for the (very expensive) research and development.
This is costing the American people a lot of money and is a needless exercise that is not bringing us better health. It is making our medical care so expensive we can barely afford it — and if the drug makes us sicker or the operation hurts us, we must fight for years to get satisfaction for our injuries.
Very simply put, We Have a Corrupt Medical System. It is time to redirect our medical care to producing the best outcome for the patients, not the most profit for the owners and participants in our medical monopoly.
Rather than jump through a bunch of hoops set up by the minions of the pharmaceutical industry to keep simple herbs like marijuana and kratom OUT, I propose we should take our case to Congress itself.
Let the people have their right to use either herb, with the understanding that they are responsible for learning how to use it safely and effectively.
Let the marijuana and the kratom industries police themselves and provide recommendations of those vendors who adhere to “best practices” of sanitary packaging, batch testing, and sustainable organic farming practices at the source.
Let the free market determine who shall stay in business, based on how well they serve their customers — not who has the slickest advertising — and pays the FDA for their stamp of approval.
The kratom movement must learn from marijuana activists’ long fight for a sensible freedom to use a divine gift to humanity.
We don’t want to wait 70 years, with people forced to do without the soothing medicinal use of kratom — or be sent to prison over our choice of how we wish to deal with our pain.
Perhaps we need the freedom to choose our preferred medical treatment added to our Bill of Rights.
We don’t need an FDA guarantee of squeaky-cleanliness, which gave us damaging products like VIOXX , Aspartame, vaccines, and statin drugs that are producing monstrous results, for which nobody goes to jail and few of the injured get any compensation!
Why play along with a corrupt game that is run by minions of an industry that, down deep, doesn’t think herbs should even be on the market at all? (Unless their subsidiaries are selling them.)
So, how is their alternative doing for us? Are we getting healthier as a country, using the pharmaceutical system?
No, of course not! Our pets and farm animals get better disease preventive nutrition than we do — and it shows. In the veterinary industry, raising livestock, the financial incentives are placed on keeping the animals WELL.
For our human brethren, the system has little financial incentive to tell us how to stay well and produce healthy offspring — and a great deal of financial reward for selling us desperate measures to relieve our pain as our bodies break down from nutritional neglect, later in life.
The U.S. Congress should take a long, hard look at the “sickness care system” — a monopoly they have helped to fund and encourage that is harming our nation. If they won’t acknowledge the harm this Big Pharma monopoly is doing to our health, then those elected representatives need to be replaced.
In 2015, let’s start changing the system that has been keeping Americans sick, while enriching our medical and pharmaceutical industries.
Let kratom learn how to “jump the line” and get social approval to preserve its legality and low-cost advantage.
We need to stop begging permission to be left in peace to use kratom and/or medical marijuana. Those companies selling synthetic chemicals should be the only ones needing to show their safety and efficacy.
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