The article states that the DEA can put any substance into schedule 1 category. This is unfortunate because that schedule makes things much more difficult to study.
Of particular interest is that these alkaloids are G-protein-biased agonists of the mu-opioid receptor - which also do not recruit β-arrestin[1] following receptor activation. It is β-arrestin recruitment that is responsible for the main side effects of opiates - respiratory depression, constipation, histamine release and build up of tolerance (which is what leads to withdrawals upon cessation). This is a very big deal.
I am a kratom user myself, using it to treat bad neuropathic pain. I am prescribed opiates, but kratom doesn't space me out like they do, there is no respiratory depression, no apparent histamine release, the constipation is much less, and I've been at the same dose for over a year. Honestly, for me it's a wonderdrug.
[1] http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jacs.6b00360?journalCode...
a lot of people, including myself, get very itchy from kratom, and i've always attributed that to histamine release. could it be something else?
With kratom I don't notice much extra itching at all, but I suppose we all act differently to things.
I have heard of that being used to treat neuropathy, but also anecdotes of it being abused recreationally.
And FWIW I code all day long.
In any case, your reasoning is completely invalid. Here, for example, is an article from pubmed which argues:
"While several cases of toxicity and death have emerged in the West, such reports have been non-existent in South East Asia where kratom has had a longer history of use. We highlight the possible reasons for this as discussed in the literature. More importantly, it should be borne in mind that the individual clinical case-reports emerging from the West that link kratom use to adverse reactions or fatalities frequently pertained to kratom used together with other substances. Therefore, there is a danger of these reports being used to strengthen the case for legal sanction against kratom. This would be unfortunate since the experiences from South East Asia suggest considerable potential for therapeutic use among people who use drugs."
Your claims could very well be true, but if you can't support them, then I'm going to just file them into the 'Snake Oil' drawer and move on.
What gets accepted as the officially-sanctioned wisdom is too easily influenced by special interests ("bootleggers and Baptists"), power grabs, and political convenience (marijuana laws and minorities).
I'd think it goes the other way too. I've worked in a lab as a data entry helper for studies of opiods on different tissues. They had no problem getting funding for their studies. I would imagine it was because it was related to War On Drugs. So there was an element of "let's show the world how terrible these drugs are, here is some money".
Experiments used fentanyl and naloxone. Aside from keeping fenanyl locked and logging/auditing its usage and waste, don't remember professors or grad students complaining about it being hard to study.
The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.
The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical treatment use in the U.S.
There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or substance under medical supervision.
Schedule I drugs:
Heroin (diacetylmorphine)
LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide)
Marijuana (cannabis, THC)
Mescaline (Peyote)
MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine or “ecstasy”)
GHB (gamma-hydroxybutyric acid)
Ecstasy (MDMA or 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine)
Psilocybin
Methaqualone (Quaalude)
Khat (Cathinone)
Bath Salts (3,4-methylenedioxypyrovalerone or MDPV)Ulterior motives aside, how about if you wanted to run that same study with LSD?
Would a Schedule I drug have been as accessible as a Schedule II drug?
I imagine this is a likely scenario.
Its continued use could threaten all sorts of business models.