By Agustin Forzani 

Milton and Rose Friedman’s lessons about the flaws of the FDA remain strikingly relevant in the 7-OH case.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is leading a campaign to ban 7-hydroxymitragynine (7-OH), a supplement used for pain relief and to help with opioid withdrawal. The agency argues 7-OH has high abuse potential and points to its growing presence in colorful consumer products found online and in gas stations.

A complete ban, however, would be an extraordinary overreaction. Researchers at Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and UCLA have urged the FDA to reconsider, presenting data showing no signs of overdose deaths or dependence. Pre-clinical studies have found no evidence of toxicity, and even the FDA’s own database shows zero deaths linked solely to 7-OH—despite roughly half a billion doses consumed in the United States so far.

Yet the FDA’s instinct to overreact is nothing new. Despite the DOGE agency’s claims that it would reform and cut wasteful jobs in the FDA, not much has changed. The problem lies much deeper than the FDA itself and has little to do with who is in charge of it.

The Institutional Problem

As Milton and Rose Friedman observed in Free to Choose, the FDA could have the best people with the best of intentions, but it will still dampen innovation and block useful drugs. A proper solution would not be limited to simply reforming the FDA from within. Rather, it must also pursue a shift in the social and political institutions involved in the agency’s decision-making process.

To understand this, as the Friedmans suggested, you must put yourself in the shoes of an FDA official charged with the decision to approve or reject the commercialization of 7-OH. Two errors are possible. You might approve it, and it could turn out to be dangerous, creating a public-health disaster which puts your name in every headline. Or you might ban it, depriving patients of what could have been a life-saving alternative, but no one will ever know.

Arguably, if 7-OH is banned, the people who might have benefited from the product—those who relapse into opioids—will probably not complain. More importantly, if they die of an overdose, their families will probably never realize an excess of bureaucratic caution cost their loved ones’ lives. When choosing between potentially causing a national overdose crisis or going unnoticed, even the most dedicated civil servant risks skewing toward banning 7-OH.

Internal Reform Isn’t Enough

The FDA holds immense power over which products are approved or rejected. With great power comes great responsibility. This dynamic creates strong social and political pressures which inevitably shape the behavior of FDA officials, who tend to favor less risky decisions.

The DOGE agency was created to restructure the FDA, but it attempted only an internal reform. Instead, it needs a shift in the balance of power and responsibility, away from the FDA and closer to those who were the ultimate decision-makers before the agency even existed: American consumers. In essence, the FDA should serve as an information provider rather than a gatekeeper, warning consumers about potential risks while allowing them to make informed choices for themselves.

Such structural changes are neither easy nor quick, but they are far more sustainable. Regardless of the outcome of the FDA’s decision on 7-OH, these issues will continue to arise as long as the agency is regarded as the final authority on new drugs. Perhaps this time the public will take it as a wake-up call to stop delegating meaningful decisions to government bureaucrats and act as the free and responsible individuals they are.

Free the People publishes opinion-based articles from contributing writers. The opinions and ideas expressed do not always reflect the opinions and ideas that Free the People endorses. We believe in free speech, and in providing a platform for open dialogue. Feel free to leave a comment.

By Winston Galt 

We live convinced that we are free. We vote every few years, can choose between different brands in the supermarket, and feel that our decisions matter. But what if all of this is nothing more than a carefully crafted illusion? What if, in reality, we are slaves without visible chains, trapped in a system that uses us like cattle, feeding off our effort and obedience?

This is the starting point of my book Do You Like Being a Slave?, a work that does not aim to be comfortable or pleasant, but rather a punch to the table, a wake-up call from our lethargy. The book begins with a troubling question that runs through every page: Do we voluntarily accept our condition as vassals of political power, or do we continue to believe, against all evidence, that we own our own lives?

The Mirage of Freedom

In the first chapter, I highlight the paradox of our era: we talk about freedom, but live under laws, taxes, regulations, and power structures that make the most important decisions for us. Politics has become an invisible cage. It’s not the classic tyranny of whips and chains, but a more sophisticated form of slavery, legitimized by custom and propaganda.

Many think I’m exaggerating, but just look around: can we really choose not to pay taxes we never directly approved? Can we avoid laws that restrict our most intimate decisions? Can we build a future outside of the State without being persecuted?

Cattle for Sacrifice

One chapter describes, in great detail, how citizens have been reduced to mere resources. We’ve been turned into sacrificial animals: productive while we serve the system, disposable when we’re no longer useful. The rhetoric of the “public good” and “collective interest” masks a wealth extraction machine where those who decide never pay the price.

At this point, the question is no longer whether we are free, but whether we were ever truly free.

Politics as an Industry

The third chapter unveils what often goes unnoticed: the political industry. It’s not a vocation of service, but a market where a few live off the labor of nearly everyone else. Like any industry, it has its customers, its products, and its advertising. The problem is, unlike any other sector, in this one, you can’t stop “buying.”

The citizen is both a forced consumer and raw material. And in this twisted game, they always lose.

Politiranny: Tyranny Dressed as Democracy

Naming things gives them power. That’s why I use the term politiranny to describe the essence of the current system: a political tyranny legitimized by democratic rituals. We believe that by voting we exercise power, when in fact, we are giving it away.

Democracy, far from being salvation, turns out to be an illusion. A carefully staged theater where the roles are already defined, and the outcome, one way or another, always benefits the same people.

Camouflaged Fascism

Another chapter comes to a conclusion that’s as harsh as it is necessary: what we call liberal democracy today is nothing more than camouflaged fascism. Not fascism with banners and colored shirts, but something much more effective: bureaucratic, regulatory, technological. A fascism that doesn’t need explicit violence, because it has achieved something much more powerful: voluntary obedience.

Freedom… for What?

In the face of this, a key question arises: Freedom, for what? The answer is simple and radical at the same time: because without freedom, we are not fully human. Because accepting slavery—even a comfortable one—means renouncing our dignity.

The only solution I propose in the book is libertarianism. Not as a rigid dogma, but as a coherent horizon: returning to each individual the right to decide about their life, work, property, and future. Reclaiming personal responsibility and rejecting dependence on a state that promises much but offers little, except for more subtle chains. Living from ideas rather than ideologies, which are always invisible prisons.

An Invitation to Think

This book does not aim to give definitive answers, but to raise unsettling questions. Do You Like Being a Slave? is written for those who feel that something doesn’t quite add up in the official narrative, for those who suspect that the world they live in is not as free as they’re told.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re working more to sustain the system than to live your own life, if you’ve ever doubted the redemptive role of politics, if you’ve ever wondered why we continue to obey those who have no moral legitimacy to govern, this book is for you.

It is not an academic manifesto nor a typical pamphlet. It’s a direct, uncomfortable conversation, and hopefully, one that’s liberating.

The question remains in the air: Do You Like Being a Slave?

In the coming weeks, I will publish each chapter of the book on Free the People so that you can read it freely.

You can find the full book at utopyc.net.

Free the People publishes opinion-based articles from contributing writers. The opinions and ideas expressed do not always reflect the opinions and ideas that Free the People endorses. We believe in free speech, and in providing a platform for open dialogue. Feel free to leave a comment.

By Robert E. Wright

As the municipal court judge rambled on, I briefly envisioned my demise: being “Andy Dufresned” to death in the local jail because my wife finally cleaned out the garage. While many Americans focus on abuses of federal power, state and local governments also pose grave threats to liberty.

My wife put the unwanted items at the curb so that trash pickers could help themselves before the garbage men hauled any leftovers to the local landfill. In my neighborhood, as in many across America, that is The Way.

Sometimes, the stuff is so good that the curb gets picked clean, leaving the garbage guys with nary an item to collect. This time, though, it rained, and rained, and rained. Most pickers stayed home and a lot of previously usable stuff got ruined anyway. So come pickup time, lots of water laden stuff sat at my curb.

A few days later, a summons arrived in the mail. I had broken a local ordinance and faced fines and possibly jail time! I looked up the ordinance and discovered that the township’s bulk trash collection rule bears no resemblance to actual practice or even the brochure that new residents receive. It is also ambiguous as all get out.

I immediately filed a motion to quash the proceedings but instead of sharing it with the judge, some clerk simply rescheduled the virtual hearing. When the judge and prosecutor (!!) finally read my motion at the hearing, and I started asking questions like if I could plead nolo contendre, they got squirrely and suddenly wanted to make a deal. I pleaded guilty and paid $25 in court costs in exchange for no fine or sodomy time.

Bully for me, but I cannot help but wonder how many fellas out there with less legal acumen than myself are right now getting bullied by The Sisters in the jail shower room for heinous crimes like not monitoring how much trash is at their curb.

This episode raises a bigger question: why are municipal governments involved in trash collection at all? I have lived in two places—Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Mount Pleasant, Michigan—with private trash pickup and, predictably, received services superior to, and at lower cost than, those provided in towns that monopolize the function.

Tellingly, the businesses directly adjacent to my current home lawfully contract with private companies to haul away their trash. But somehow households are incapable of contracting likewise? Trust me, it is much easier to hire a trash removal company than to deal with a municipal court!

But municipal government officials, just like state and federal ones, seek money and power. Municipal trash pickup means yet another budget to bilk, more union members to control, and more perks, like unlimited garbage hauling, for municipal officials.

And think of the power trip and money involved for the prosecutor and judge. I can hear them at the tavern in the evening: “We got that sum bich good today, eh! How dare his wife clean out the garage and try to help out others in the community by leaving it at the curb.”

Yes, Americans need to worry about federal government overreach, by both major parties. But they also need to worry about the petty tyrants who gorge themselves on real estate taxes and ignorance about the proper scope of government. If we do not first re-privatize garbage collection across the nation, how will we ever convince enough Americans that we can re-privatize the roads and schools, too?

Free the People publishes opinion-based articles from contributing writers. The opinions and ideas expressed do not always reflect the opinions and ideas that Free the People endorses. We believe in free speech, and in providing a platform for open dialogue. Feel free to leave a comment.