National Institutes of Health recently published a catastrophically flawed case report on kratom, with multiple references which directly contradict the paper’s conclusions, and one source that simply doesn’t exist.

On August 30th, the DEA filed a notice of intent to temporarily designate Kratom as a schedule 1 drug. That notice listed 33 footnotes, but the actual references themselves were not included in the document itself. The same day, a FOIA was filed for that information … to which the agency responded with with press releases and copies of federal laws.

Just because America was taking some time off to relax after a grueling election season doesn’t mean that transparency can afford to take a nap. Well, OK, some releases were delayed as agencies shut their doors for the Thanksgiving holiday, but the releases made earlier in the week still made plenty of news.