Know Thy Enemy

[Marsofold]

Here's what the DEA has been up to lately. Note the increased interest in cacti:

http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/programs/fo...05/mg1205.html

[sands of time]

Yea, thats a great place to see what they are up to, and to get a clue as to what they are gonna do next. I'm concerned about this one, take a look...

http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/programs/fo...05/mg0705.html

The very last article is reguarding kratom, and they don't say to many positive things about it. They have clearly done some research on the subject, but they picked the strongest negatives to write about. Some info is very sketchy as well, such as the following statements...

"some users smoke the dried leaves" Very few, if any, smoke kratom as the primary consumption method. Some people have smoked it just to see if it is an effective way of achieving effects, and it clearly is not.

"The primary active alkaloid in kratom is mitragynine" Though this alkaloid is found in abundance in kratom, it is not clear if this is the alkaloid responsible for most of kratom's effects. 7 - hydroxymitragynine has been studied to some extant, and it appears many times stronger than mitragynine.

"Users who combine kratom with nervous system depressants may experience respiratory depression, which may cause them to stop breathing." I think they just put this in there to add a greater sense of danger with regaurds to kratom. There has never been ANY reported cases of this happening. For all we know, aliens could fly out my ass and take over the world.

"It is likely that kratom abuse is unrecognized in areas where it is occurring because the crushed, dried leaves resemble other plant-based drugs, and the effects mimic effects of other drugs." The only effects that kratom seem to share is with opiates, and a simple drug test could determine if the person took opiates. Also, what is "kratom abuse"??? You just can't call any use abuse, although this is the DEA we are talking about. With they're mentality, using mouth wash in the morning could be classified as alcohol abuse.

"One potential user population for kratom is opiate addicts who may attempt to self-treat if they do not have access to methadone programs or if they are reluctant to seek professional treatment." Perhaps this is the one positive peice of info they added, although it is not making kratom sound like a good thing in the eyes of the general public. If people are using kratom to get themselves off opiates, why should the DEA interfere? O yea, then the DEA has a smaller group of people to push around and generate revenue from.

Sorry for the rant session, it just pisses me off that the DEA goes after these herbal highs that they know nothing about.

[CrystalDextro]

Our govt. was the fact producers they test many things to find the truth, but somewhere after the tobacco experiments and finding tobacco harmful (which therefor harmed their profits from taxation) i'm guessing that kinda changed. Now it seems they rather just implicate a truth instead proving something to be true. Look at 911 & Iraq.

[Pinkavvy]

Swim regularly (daily) reads all the updates on the dea website. Swim recomends that everybody familiarize themselves with that website, and read it often. The microgran bulliten is updated monthly, and has a lot of dea new discoveries... including blotters with rc's on them, and ways things are trafficked through the borders.

[CrystalDextro]

its really interesting how many drugs are either not scheduled and end up in the DEA lab or are a mimic of another drug such as acid blotters that are actually a different substance similar or even something with completely different effects. Its kinda sad all that mescaline lost....