Thanks a whole bunch, Mario and TexasFrets! I truly appreciate the time y'all** took to listen and give feedback.

- btw I give myself permission, a tad lenient though it may be, for that particular contraction, since I was born in TX, but...and here's where the leniency shines through...only lived there until I was 2...but I did go back there in '83 for about a year and did some stuff like help build a precut timber "kit" home somewhere near The Big Thicket in the east. Anyhoo...-



Sorry for the late response, I'm in the grip of a nasty consternation, health-wise.

Re: the strangeness vs the essentiality of the theme; I'd argue for the latter. In fact I purposefully draw attention to the fact that the right to defend oneself from ailments with whatever natural remedy can be had is a type of self-defense, and if one holds to the Natural Rights theory of governance, there should be a Constitutional Amendment protecting that natural right that is perfectly analogous to the Second Amendment.

There will always be a tension between protecting proven, assumed or purported benefits to individuals, and proven, assumed or purported benefits to society as a whole..."The Public Good", "Public Safety", etc. IOW individual rights versus "the right to be kept (feeling) safe".

Modern States have bought into the idea that experts can sometimes be enlisted to decide for everyone what is in the Public interest. We see that very struggle now with covid.

Obviously, problems arise when an Agency falls under regulatory capture and the experts therein are purporting to protect the Public Welfare when they are really protecting Industry agendas. Perhaps no clearer case of this can be found than the FDA's blatantly false smear campaign against the natural coffee family "tea leaf" product common name of kratom. This, when kratom is helping thousands, nay tens of thousands, of people get off of the opiate addiction treadmill***. Kratom has been a real godsend for me, and thousands and thousands like me, for chronic pain and other ailments...and I will never stop telling (and singing) the truth about that. Anything can be abused, but kratom is, on balance, safe and effecting despite "experts" insisting otherwise.

I could go on, but that's the gist of it.

***because kratom is a partial opiate agonist and recruits via G-Protein pathway rather than Beta Arrestin pathway, and is unique among opiate agonists in that regard, it is uniquely safe and effective for getting people off of harmful full agonist opiates, and treating some types of pain and anxiety with far far fewer and less severe side effects. Virtually no respiratory depression...you know, the thing that kills ya from an opioid overdose. These are scientific facts and can be found in the published papers of Henningfield, et al, and an objective survey of the literature

Last edited by DIOECHOOTO; 06/05/20 08:47 AM.