Alfred Adask Beats Big Brother at its Own Game

If you haven’t heard of Alfred Adask and his little problem with the Texas attorney general, buckle up for an interesting ride. This is the mother of all Big Brother stories and shows how the little guy can sometimes beat the government at its own silly “letter of the law” game. After finishing this introductory material, please go here to listen to Holistic Survival founder Jason Hartman interview Mr. Adask on podcast #62.

Adask is one of seven defendants in a court action dating back to 2001. At issue is the manufacture and distribution of colloidal silver, which the government declared to be a “drug.” The Texas AG sued Adask and fellow defendants for $25,000 per day each. Basic math tells us this adds up to $750,000 per month or about $9 million annually. Per defendant. This ain’t peanuts, folks. The state of Texas is dead set on making a serious point in the war on drugs.

Texas freely admits that seven years of investigation and hearings (at a cost of about $500,000 to taxpayers) have yielded not a single person damaged by the colloidal silver products, and not one customer or supplier defrauded for even a penny. After several years of all defendants being deluged with all sorts of new legal documentation (charges, amendments, motions), Adask finally took it upon himself to submit a document for the court’s consideration. This document created a five month long period of dead silence from the Attorney General’s office.

The silence was broken when a Travis County judge contacted the defendants about reaching an out-of-court settlement, the terms of which included no fines or fees and the dropping of all charges. This sounds like the kind of settlement anyone charged with a crime would like to be offered! What the heck did Alfred Adask include in the document that caused the state Big Brother to slink away with tail planted firmly between its legs? After all, this is the war on drugs. Doesn’t the little guy always lose?

Apparently, the little guy has a chance to prevail when he can parse the words of the charges and prove via a simple reading of the English language that the accusations simply do not apply. Those of us of a certain age remember how former President Clinton managed to deflect accusations that he dallied with an intern while in office by famously saying a question depended on the meaning of the word “is.”

Adask employed a similar tactic when he dove into one of the sentences in the official charge. The pertinent wording is as follows, and taken from the federal code upon which the claims were based.

The term “drug” means (A) articles recognized in the official United States Pharmacopoeia, official Homoeopathic Pharmacopoeia of the United States, or official National Formulary, or any supplement to any of them; and (B) articles intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease in man or other animals and (C) articles (other than food) intended to affect the structure or any function of the body of man or other animals and (D) articles intended for use as a component of any article specified in clause (A), (B), or A food or dietary supplement for which a claim, subject to sections 343(r)(1)(B) and 343(r)(3) of this title or sections 343(r)(1)(B) and 343(r)(5)(D) of this title, is made in accordance with the requirements of section 343(r) of this title is not a drug solely because the label or the labeling contains such a claim. A food, dietary ingredient, or dietary supplement for which a truthful and not misleading statement is made in accordance with section 343(r)(6) of this title is not a drug under clause (C) solely because the label or the labeling contains such a statement.

The key to this legal gobbledygook is the phrase “man and other animals.” Adask read this to mean the government (AKA Big Brother) was implying that he was an animal. Through the use of the following points, among many others, he refuted the claim he was an animal.

  • The phrase “man or other animals” can only be read to mean that, under the alleged laws and arguments advanced by plaintiffs, “man” is viewed by plaintiffs and/or our current government as nothing more than an “animal”.
  • I am endowed by my Creator with certain inalienable Rights
  • I deny that I am an animal
  • I deny that I do business with animals
  • I eat animals

Since this submission, the AG office has been quiet on the subject for 18 of the past 22 months, though we can imagine they have a team of legal weasels dedicated to ferreting out a way around this basic interpretation of language. Of course, the case could resume at any moment in the future. For a scintillating discussion of the case with Alfred Adask himself, don’t forget to listen to Holistic Survival Podcast #62.

The Holistic Survival Team

 

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