Hi, nator. How nice to type that again...
In the other thread where this subject came up, I'm afraid Buz mistook my enthusiasm for his nick (c'mon--Buz favors herbal liberty
), his nickname for his wife, Buzgirl, their consumption of thousands of pounds of herbs (maybe only onifre and I can match that), and my "Right on, bro!" for opposition to the regulation of herbal remedies.
One man's herb is another man's...herb.
So I approach this from the intersection of cognitive liberty and public safety. If somebody wants to grow or harvest an herb and consume it, whether for recreation or medicine or poison, that's fine with me.
They can take my herb away when they pry it from my cold dead fingers. Take that, Chuck.
But herbal materials packaged as medicine and sold to the public as medicine shoud be subject to strict regulation and testing; outlandish, undocumented claims should be forbidden; materials contaminated with prescription drugs or heavy metals should lead to criminal prosecutions.
Bit deregulation and defunding of regulatory agencies has created governmental watchdogs who want to lick industry's butt and roll over.
We've seen the result of decades of lax enforcement and eight years of deregulation across the board: a coal mine industry regulated by people they party with finds it easier to pay paltry fines than to maintain workplace safety. So people die.
Coal companies are cited and fined; but they don't have to pay while the fines are appealed, and the appeals take years. Regulation never actually costs them anything because they seldom have to pay, and when they do the fines are trivial, an accepted cost of doing business.
BP drills offshore in the gulf without any real review, turns off its alarms, has a spill contigency plan that was a cut-and-paste from Alaska, including arctic animals and dead men as resources to call upon for expert advice. People die, and the Gulf Coast faces economic and environmental disaster.
Now BP threatens to "be unable" to meet the costs of the clean-up unless we give them more permits.
Food safety was simiarly defunded. Result? Deadly hamburgers, ptomaine chicken, and food stuffs imported from China with the most bizarre industrial chemical contaminants. Tens of thousands of industrial chemicals--including potent endocrine disruptors--enjoy a "grandfathered" status under the law and need pass no safety tests, while amphibians and Florida cougars develop increasingly devastating reproductive anomalies.
Even now the manufacturers need not demonstrate safety: you can make it and use it until someone else proves that it's dangerous, the exact opposite of the more enlightened European practice. Organophosphates were recently linked to an increased risk for autism: in agricultural communities out west, poor communities are paid off with trival sums when a fog of organophosphates floats over their homes and schools.
I can't go to the feedlot and inspect my beef and chicken; we have little choice other than to rely on government for that. I can't undertake the studies that would eliminate those thousands of dangerous chemicals: I have to rely on the government for that.
We should regulate and test commercial herb; we should legalize
all homegrown herbs.
Have you ever been to an American wedding? Where's the vodka? Where's the marinated herring?!
-Gogol Bordello