The DEA is withdrawing a proposal to ban another plant citing public outcry

I know what you mean, but it really bothers me that you are only counting American deaths. The total number of Iraqi deaths arising from the Iraq war is highly disputed, but it seems to be somewhere between 150,000 and a bit over 1,000,000, depending on the survey and whether it only counts direct deaths of combatants vs. surveys that count civilian deaths and indirect effects. In any case, deaths arising from opioids are nowhere near any amount of "Iraq wars per year".

>> 1. The drug or other substance has a high potential for >>abuse.

>> 2. The drug or other substance has no currently accepted >>medical use in treatment in the United States.

>> 3. There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the >>drug or other substance under medical supervision

>Kratom doesn't meet any of those requirements, let alone >all three. The scheduling process requires reform, and >this impacts a large part of the world since drug >scheduling (and patent protection on pharma) are part of >American trade agreements.

Mitragynine, the major alkaloid identified from Kratom, has been reported as a partial opioid agonist producing similar or more potent effects than morphine. An interesting minor alkaloid of Kratom, 7-hydroxymitragynine, has been reported to be significantly more potent than morphine. (Actually, in studies, mitragynine was shown to be 13x more potent than morphine, and 7-hydroxymitragynine to be 4x more potent than mitragynine, as per Vicknasingam et al 2010 in the International Journal of Drug Policy, and Matsumoto et al., 2005, Life Sciences). Both Kratom alkaloids are reported to activate supraspinal mu- and delta- opioid receptors, explaining their use by chronic narcotics users to ameliorate opioid withdrawal symptoms.

The problem here isn't getting rid of a "legal high." Kratom should not be: it carries all the risks of opiates, and may have an independent mechanism of seizure activity. Physiologic dependence has also been reported, as well as thyroid dysfunction, liver damage, and if mixed with another opioid agonist (tramadol is easy to score on the street, as a very common med for diabetic neuropathic pain) it'll put you right in the ground, as has been seen in a number of deaths in Sweden.

You're right it doesn't meet all three criteria, although it certainly meets 1 and 2. 3 is a valid basis for conducting for medical research, to determine proper pharmacokinetics and see what safe usage scenarios are.

However, it's a serious drug, and needs to be regulated as such. It should not be Schedule I, the DEA's favorite way of creating job security for itself, but it seems like the opposition position that has developed is yelling "keep it freely available," which is unconscionable.

IIRC something similar happened with MDMA.

Hopefully folks like myself who have used Kratom to alleviate opiate withdrawal to great success will come forward and comment.

Anecdotally speaking, there are folks who have used kratom to ween themselves off of maintenance drugs like methadone and suboxone.

The withdrawals from long-acting maintenance opiates like these can last months making it nearly impossible to get off of them cold-turkey.

Switching to kratom, which has a shorter, more forgiving withdrawal, can be of great benefit to an addict looking to get off of these maintenance drugs.

For an addict, kratom stops withdrawals in their tracks. It doesn't get you high, and taking more to get high would be pointless.

To an opiate-naive individual kratom will at most give a mild buzz. It's not like taking heroin, hydrocodone, or even codeine. just a mild buzz.

Kratom is usually sold as a powdered leaf. You can't overdose on kratom, because if you take too much of the powdered leaf you just throw up, well before you're able to ingest a dangerous amount. It's very self-regulating in that way.

You can't smoke or snort the powdered leaf. It is usually swallowed as a powdered leaf with a thick juice or simply brewed into a tea.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwMPT92bOJKdZWM2bzlLeU5DdDg... is the letter from the American Kratom Association to the DEA, which compares the number of kratom related calls to poison control centers to calls related to supplements. Kratom seems to be at about the same level as ginkgo biloba and better tolerated than St. John's Wort.

This is surprising, and has resulted in weird errors in literature reviews on kratom, that I've spent dozens of hours trying to unpack during my efforts to improve the Wikipedia article.

Kratom seems to have a really surprisingly low incidence of severe side effects. The state of the information out there is weird. Something like someone said "Kratom is a mu opioid agonist and mu opioid agonists cause respiratory depression" in a peer reviewed paper, which then got cited in a medical textbook as "Kratom causes respiratory depression". However, primary research in mice shows that kratom causes dramatically less respiratory depression than poppy derived opioids. No case of kratom related respiratory depression has actually been documented in a human. In my comprehensive review of the literature, there was someone who had a seizure and was intubated but still had respiration in the normal range. Someone else suffered aspiration pneumonia in response to (inhaling?) kratom, but aspiration pneumonia is not respiratory depression.

Basically, kratom does have side effects, and real side effects, but when looked at as a population level public health problem, is profoundly safe for how powerful of an effect it actually has.

Let's ban poison ivy.

Let's ban going outside without sunblock on.

Let's ban walking around without a bicycle helmet on.

Let's have the govt come into my office every two hours and remind me to get up and walk around and stretch.

At some point, people have to take care of themselves.

How many kratom addicts have you ever had a problem with? And how many problematic interactions with a drunk? We aren't banning alcohol either.

regarding your second point, I cant find any hard sources, but my experience has been that unless one is doing WAAYY too much kratom, both per dose and over longer periods of time. Unless you are already an opioid addict trying to use kratom to maintain and kick a harder habit (the well known use is as a transition from dope), you should NOT be doing kratom every day.. unless you're trying to become one of the aforementioned addicts.

On 3, definitely, it's a ridiculous misuse of the conception that natural is healthy. What if I told you to go out and do datura (Stramonium, iirc), or nightshade (makes you so pretty!). Both just as natural, arguably moreso considering you have to process kratom leaves, whereas you can go from finding a datura or nightshade family plant to eating it in seconds.

Nobody is delusional about the effects of Kratom or downsides - all drugs have downsides. I've never seen it mentioned or recommended outside of opiate substitution and for opiate addicts - it has no value as a recreational drug.

Just a side note: just because things are natural/plants doesn't mean they won't kill you. There are a ton of poisonous mushrooms out there for instance.

But anyway, if you want to eat poisonous mushrooms, you should be able to right? Should you be able to kill yourself? Do you have a right to what happens to your body after you die? Who..owns your body?

There are a ton of great articles out there on all of those questions and they all get into really weird grey legal areas. Have phun.

Because Richard Nixon hated hippies and wanted to set up a nearly unaccountable police agency to persecute them. I'm not kidding and only exaggerating a little bit.

The DEA basically overseas things that aren't medicinal drugs and supplements - more in the range of recrational drugs. They also do some work investigating "suspicious" prescriptions and things like that For example, pharmacies have to report some drugs and numbers to the DEA and follow some of their rules for opiates. DEA rules means you are limited on how much Sudafed you can purchase at once because it is used as an ingredient for making meth. In addition, I'm not sure the FDA has that sort of manpower to check up on that stuff.

In a way, the two agencies overlap. In this case, they were treating it as a street drug only - which is purely under the realm of the DEA.

They overstepped their authority in attempting to schedule kratom, as it is old, natural, and not particularly dangerous.

There are lots of good arguments for and against this, but it is the primary reason why presidential elections are so important in the USA.

I found it an extraordinary read.

"Researchers say that their work with kratom could eventually lead to the development of nonaddictive alternatives to powerful opiate painkillers. Placing kratom in schedule 1 would cripple researchers ability to study the drug, they say."

Look at Colorado or other states which the populace decided to legalize marijuana industry - which were actually big deals. Where has the executive branch stepped in to stop the federal governments intervention in state policy?

It's sad when the most minor amount of positive development is rewarded as an drastic evolution in behaviour. Is that the standards that we hold the government up to these days?

Kratom is harmless to the average person. Comparable or likely less than marijuana. This was the easiest of choices, especially when considering the complete lack of evidence that it's comparable to the other schedule I drugs.