Always one bureaucratic step too far

We all hear that elected government officials are in the pocket of lobbying interests. What no one is talking about sufficiently is the corruption hidden within government agencies; the lobbying and pressure being brought to bear behind closed doors is rampant and, if discovered, it is always too late and too little can be done.

Here are a few examples, all true, all swept under the rug. It is not that journalists do not talk about them, but they always do so after the fact, even when warned, even when well informed. Take the absolutely nonsensical banning by the DEA of Kratom. What is Kratom you ask? It is a plant, like tea plants. It grows wild, it is harvested and used for all sorts of herbal remedies. Why is the DEA banning it? Without one single study to see what the plant’s properties are, they have come up with that catch-all phrase “public safety.” That gives them the power to seize imported leaves, stop any sale or mailing of the plants, and – here’s the really uninformed and stupid part – label Kratom as an opioid and as a Schedule 1 narcotic. Hey, welcome to the marijuana and opium classification (not applied to OxyContin)!

Now, what is Kratom used for? It is NOT an opioid as it is an alkali substance. That’s called chemistry science (something the DEA is not renowned for).  Pharmacologists say it is not a Schedule 1 drug. How does the main chemical mitragynine in Kratom actually work? It seems that it binds to some of the same receptors as opioids, providing pain relief. But mitragynine doesn’t cause the same deadly, addictive, side effects as opioids.

People who have chronic pain are prescribed thousands of pills every year with all the real opioids like OxyContin and so on. The DEA and the FDA support those, actually prefer you take dangerous opioids. Go on, get addicted! Along comes a cheaper, natural pain suppresser that has been used for thousands of years and, presto, they can’t get any money from it, so the big pharma boys call the DEA and the FDA and cite 215 cases of poison control centers getting possible calls for people taking Kratom improperly and then the DEA gets to dust off and use their “public safety” argument. Under that argument, why not ban all bathtubs? The WSJ says, “Deaths from Drowning in Bathtubs Up 70% in 10 Years” at over 4,000! 

Now, let’s be fair here, the DEA could have simply said there is a possible problem and temporarily said that Kratom needs testing and evaluation. Nope, someone with big power made sure they made it a “deadly drug” and placed it in Schedule 1. That mom, Karisa Rowland, featured on NPR and others with a previous addition to opioids, no longer addicted with Kratom, can expect the DEA to break down her door, place her kids in a foster home and what’s her real crime? Not paying big pharma for opioid drugs that are legal and instead finding a non-addictive herbal remedy. “I’m the one in pain. The people making these laws, they’re not the ones going through this pain; they’re not the ones whose families have broken up,” she says. “I found life and I have no intention of letting it go.”

Remember the Exxon Valdez? Do you know that the Coast Guard admirals who set the criteria for who pilots a ship usually retire to jobs with the oil industry? Did you know that the Exxon Valdez’s first and second officers were always fired 1 year + 364 days after being hired so they would not gain full status, thereby remaining “in training” at a lower salary most of their careers as mandated by the Coast Guard? Did you know that the Coast Guard formal inquiry found Capt. Hazelwood completely correct in his handling of the ship and that the blood tested turned out not to be his? They gave him back his master’s ticket. Had to. Part of his payout from Exxon was to disappear with cash. And the Coast Guard investigation? Closed, shut, quick. More admirals found employment at big oil.

People talk about wanting to stop the corruption of big government, they talk about lobbying congressmen and congresswomen as being the zenith of evil. Well, perhaps they have a point — but all the while no one is seeing the true levels of corruption taking place at the job-seeking or quick promotion within government leverage incidents. For me, that’s where most of the corruption of government comes into play — the code inspector wanting four more visits to approve your simple business at $75 a visit, the police forced to stop a quota of cars for petty violations because it is election time and a balanced budget looks good to the electorate, the road snow manager taking a discount cruise arranged by the salt company. Everyone has their hand out? Perhaps not, but it sure begins to appear that way when really noncommon sense decisions are made over and over with no one being held accountable.

Peter Riva, a former resident of Amenia Union, now lives in New Mexico.