In a massive nationwide attack on American business owners last week dubbed "Operation Log Jam", federal law enforcement agents, in conjunction with state and local police, fanned out from Texas to New Hampshire to interrupt over 300 businesses, arrest 91 business owners, employees and consumers, and loot almost 5 million packets of herbal incense products, along with millions of dollars of other merchandise, while cleaning out over $36 million in cash from cash registers and store safes.

During the Operation Log Jam press conference held on July 26, 2012, DEA and federal collaborates did their best to justify their oppressive tactics by demonizing merchants in the herbal incense industry with a new label of “drug traffickers”.  Feds even went as far as to threaten still-legitimate small business owners and active consumers, warning that these police state actions are just the beginning, and that federal law enforcement is specifically “coming after” them.  The DEA hopes that this sheer demonstration of brute force will be enough to scare Americans into yielding more of their freedom of choice liberties to the government, thus allowing the feds to continue expanding their powers by creating a new class of criminals where none existed before.

Their Justification?
Claims from misinformed legislators and the media that herbal incense products are intended to be “dangerous designer drugs” are an “epidemic”. Some even claim that products containing synthetic cannabinoids have been linked to several deaths and thousands of health scares.  While there are several published clinical studies showing the benefits of products containing synthetic cannabinoids, the feds have not been able to produce a single study showing that herbal incense products containing synthetic cannabinoids are dangerous in any way.

However, in the past year, legislators and law enforcement have been using selected statistics from poison control centers and emergency room visits, to elevate public fear against using herbal incense products and justify more limitations on Americans freedom of choice.  This fear has been used as a platform to pass an unprecedented amount of laws across the country against small business owners and consumers participating in the herbal incense industry. 

When you select the facts, you manipulate the truth.  This report paints a complete picture of how relatively insignificant the numbers of herbal incense misuse cases are compared to other legal, government regulated substances. What follows is the complete picture of where Herbal Incense ranks amongst poison control centers.

Misuse of Herbal Incense products resulted in 2,906 calls to poison control centers across the nation in 2010;  6,959 calls in 2011; and 1,901 calls in the first three months of 2012, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers. According to this Poison Statistics Report   released by the American Association of Poison Control Centers, here are the Top 5 substances involved in human exposure calls in 2009.

The call centers also report 70,837 Calls for Animal bites, 58,687 calls for Plant Exposures, Food poisoning calls at 26,495, and Carbon monoxide at 13,771 exposures (and 37 fatalities)

According to the logic of legislators, law enforcement, and the media, this data leads to a startling conclusion:

• Soap, make-up, dishwasher detergent, and perfume are 176 TIMES MORE DANGEROUS to public safety than products containing synthetic cannabinoids.

If the Legislative and law enforcement crackdowns on herbal incense are truly driven by being in the best interest of “Public Safety “then:

• Shouldn’t these items above take banning priority over Herbal Incense Products?
• Can these common household items also be classified by your government as “drugs” or “drug paraphernalia”, especially if consumers continue to misuse them outside of their manufactured intent?

Regarding emergency room visits, another startling statistic comes from the Centers of Disease Control (CDC), which reports:

• Dogs alone bite more than 4.7 million Americans on average each year. 
• Each year, 800,000 Americans seek medical attention for dog bites; half of these are children.  

Is this not classifiable as a “serious public health problem”? Should your government legislate against your family pet to save our children from unnecessary risk and harm?

This is the most appalling moment in the history of the supposed “war on drugs”, where federal law enforcement agencies feel they have the right to disrupt hundreds of American lives, on a whim, to assert their job security. Will the American people stand for this latest of blatant attacks on their personal liberties, or will they seek to take legal action against these closed society tactics and call for the media to stop promoting this brainless agenda. Our hearts and hopes are with the latter.