The Iraq vet looked numbly at the bag of green powder open on his coffee table. The Ziploc read ‘KRATOM’ scrawled out in sharpie across a peeling strip of masking tape. It was his only comfort, his last friend in these endlessly dark days. He took a spoonful and mixed it with water; I watched him boil the concoction with his gas station zippo and suck up the green liquid with his needle like some metallic mosquito’s proboscis feeding on bile. He tied off his arm with a leather belt and depressed the kratom into his veins. His pupils pinned and his eyelids flutterd; he’s somewhere else now, far off in a world of ecstasy and addiction.

Or so the DEA would have you believe.

When the DEA announced the emergency scheduling of kratom nearly a month ago, the vast and varied user-base was reasonably shocked and awed by the audacity and ignorance of the DEA’s decision to place kratom in schedule 1 (alongside substances such as heroin and the worst of them all, marijuana).

A decision made ostensibly for the public health but in reality a muscling out of the best, safest alternative to the infinitely more addictive and potentially fatal pharmaceutical offerings. Another reason for the DEA to exist, a whole new class of criminals made overnight. It’s beautiful isn’t it?

We’ve seen these past twenty or so days an unprecedented outpouring of protest from veterans, chronic pain suffers, people with anxiety and depressive disorders, former opiate addicts, and everyday joes who prefer a healthy alternative to alcohol for their recreational needs.

The DEA’s response to the overwhelming public backlash? A half-hearted correspondence from their spokesman with the Washington Post meant to, what, placate the swath of individuals harmed by their criminal maneuvers?

“That was eye-opening for me personally,” he said. “I want the Kratom community to know that the DEA does hear them. Our goal is to make sure this is available to all of them.” -Melvin Patterson, DEA spokesman

So to clarify, the DEA’s goal is to make sure that kratom is available to all those that need it and plan to accomplish that goal by making it a criminal offense to sell or possess it and raiding the vendors that already make this plant readily available to those who need it. The legal exchange of kratom between producers and consumers has functioned safely and effectively for years without the DEA’s “help.” It’s my feeling that this purported assistance won’t be something kratom users can opt out of.

It’s reports like this one that foretell the chilling future that awaits individuals predisposed to opioid use once kratom prohibition has taken effect.

But it’s the last line in that Redditor’s post that unwittingly demonstrates the perversity of the DEA as a government entity:

“If the DEA really cared about public health, they would be passing legislation to protect the use of Kratom.”

There is no longer, and has not been for some time, a separation of executive and legislative power within our government. The DEA has grown into a government entity capable of, if not in name then in practice proscribing law to the citizenry.

The laughable myth that the DEA wants to end drug addiction and overdose is so blatantly false! Everything the agency does acts in direct opposition to this supposed goal. The DEA thrives off of opioid addiction and the heroin black market because without them they’d be out of a job. Kratom is a threat to the DEA because it reduces opioid usage and overdose.

I think people find it hard to swallow that a massive government agency can operate for decades based entirely on a false premise and in fact do everything it can to work against its supposed purpose. Given that the DEA is acutely aware of the 18,893 overdose deaths related to prescription pain relievers, and the 10,574 overdose deaths related to heroin in 2014 alone, then taking away the safe alternative of kratom from the people who need something to get by would make DEA agents… well, you be the judge.

EDIT: Reddit user: /u/FlacOrGtfo pointed out that Methamphetamine was in fact schedule II, thank you for the correction.