> Why does the DEA have this power?

Because Richard Nixon hated hippies and wanted to set up a nearly unaccountable police agency to persecute them. I'm not kidding and only exaggerating a little bit.

Is there anything in favor of the war on drugs ? I heard portugal made every drug legal and the amount of addicts has plumeted.

Decriminalized them. They're not _legal_. Still illegal to produce, buy, sell them.

As far as the FDA is concerned, this is an herbal supplement. As such, there is very little oversight. Occasionally they ban supplements, but only after a long while and a good number of deaths. For it to be used legitamately as a drug, something prescribed, a company must go through all the animal testing and trials and whatnot. To count as a supplement, it might have to go through some things as well. This particular plant seemed that it was in a somewhat grey area - not quite a supplement (officially), yet not as inert as lettuce.

The DEA basically overseas things that aren't medicinal drugs and supplements - more in the range of recrational drugs. They also do some work investigating "suspicious" prescriptions and things like that For example, pharmacies have to report some drugs and numbers to the DEA and follow some of their rules for opiates. DEA rules means you are limited on how much Sudafed you can purchase at once because it is used as an ingredient for making meth. In addition, I'm not sure the FDA has that sort of manpower to check up on that stuff.

In a way, the two agencies overlap. In this case, they were treating it as a street drug only - which is purely under the realm of the DEA.

The DEA has the power to schedule newly developed, dangerous synthetic drugs without immediate congressional oversight, the idea being that chemists can design and bring to market new, dangerous drugs more quickly than Congress is able to act.

They overstepped their authority in attempting to schedule kratom, as it is old, natural, and not particularly dangerous.

The idea that law enforcement agencies must be able to write their own law on the fly is the root of a lot of evil, not just in this case. Usually, they're not really in a hurry. They just want less oversight.

We can't wait for Congress because Congress is too slow! (Well, this one does make some sense as Congress seems to be deadlocked all the time...)

We need warrantless wiretaps and NSLs because it takes too long to get a warrant!

We need to detain people without a warrant because, again, we have no time to go find a judge!

We need to torture these terrorists because the next attack might come any minute and who doesn't like Jack Bauer?

Our law makers have delegated many of their powers, under the constitution, to administrative organizations.

There are lots of good arguments for and against this, but it is the primary reason why presidential elections are so important in the USA.

Right. And I think the parent asked a really good question: isn't the power of regulating what foods and drugs are safe for the populace to consume a responsibility that was delegated to the USFDA, not the DEA?

If the DEA does have this power … isn't there overlap between the FDA and the DEA?

the answer is simple: the FDA is not a police agency and the DEA is.

their domains overlap because the prohibition culture of the U.S. government does not treat "drugs" rationally (i.e. as if they were simply medicines) but rather has tied the entire concept up in a gordian knot of fear, racism, social engineering, and in-group selection.

similarly, alcohol and tobacco, despite obviously being "drugs" even according to the logic of the federal government bureaucracy, are given their own police agency as well, because the DEA was tasked with persecuting hippies and brown-skinned people, whereas the ATF was tasked with shooting up disobedient white people.

I believe the DEA is part of the Justice Department and serves the executive branch.

The FDA is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, also serving the executive branch.

Sorry, I don't know, but it is a good question, about what policy determines, which department is responsible for what.

For an understanding of how America got to its current circumstance regarding drugs, I strongly recommend a book, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, by Johann Hari.

I found it an extraordinary read.