Category: Kratom

RADNOR — One week after the Radnor Board of Health said they’d recommend the township not regulate kratom, the commissioners are moving ahead with the introduction of an ordinance to regulate the substance.

But the proposed regulations will not be a ban, as some residents and commissioners have demanded. Instead, the new rules will limit where it’s sold and set a minimum age for purchasing the product.

A final vote on the regulations could come as early as the board’s next meeting on March 28.

Under the proposed ordinance, the sale of kratom and another product called delta 8 would be prohibited within 1,000 feet of a school, playground or daycare center.

Keep reading at delcotimes.com

Many of their stories are similar. Homeless and hooked on heroin. Suffering from chronic pain and addicted to opioids. Unemployed with a grim outlook for the future.

Until these consumers started using a botanical native to Southeast Asia: kratom.

In response to a Federal Register notice related to an upcoming meeting of the World Health Organization (WHO), one man named Abe Stewart wrote to FDA that he suffered from “chronic pain” and turned to opioids.

“I became addicted, I lost my home and my job, and I was homeless for years dealing with an opioid addiction,” he shared. “Kratom not only [helped] me get over that addiction, but it also helps me deal with the pain so I can be a functioning member of society. Without this plant in my life, the pain would be so horrific that it would not be worth living.”

Read more at Natural Products Insider

MADISON – Assembly lawmakers are scheduled to take up a bill this week that would legalize an herbal supplement over the objection of law enforcement officials and medical doctors. 

But Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, who supports the legislation, said Wednesday that the bill is in limbo and may get voted down on the floor. 

Under the legislation, the extract known as kratom would no longer be considered a controlled substance in Wisconsin — one of few states that bans the product.

Derived from the leaves of an evergreen tree native to Southeast Asia, kratom acts on opioid receptors in the brain and is sold as a supplement, most often in capsule or powder that can be mixed with liquid.

Read the full article at jsonline.com.

The Ohio House passed a bill allowing for regulation of kratom on Wednesday, a controversial move given that some medical experts have called it addictive and harmful.

Kratom is an herbal extract from the leaves of a Southeast Asian tree and is typically taken as a powder or tea. According to the Cleveland Clinic, the extract can decrease pain, lead to pleasure or sedation and can help people cope with opioid withdrawal.

Currently, its use is not outlawed in Ohio, and it is sold in specialty stores, head shops, gas stations and online. But whether it’s safe has been a matter of debate.

Get the full story at finance.yahoo.com.

JACKSON • One day after marijuana became legal in Mississippi for medicinal use, the state House on Thursday passed legislation that would make the herbal product known as kratom illegal. “This is a drug that has no medicinal value,” House Drug Policy Chairman Lee Yancey said from the…

Read the full story at Daily Journal

TOPEKA (KSNT) — Hundreds of Kansas stores sell Kratom, a controversial herbal extract from Southeast Asia that some people use to treat chronic pain. A new proposal being weighed by the state senate would ensure that the product is protected from harmful additives.

The substance has received pushback from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has labeled Kratom unsafe for human consumption given its psychoactive and euphoric properties.

However, many people that advocate for its use have pointed to its health benefits, and say it could be the key to battling the nation’s opioid epidemic.

Mac Haddow, Senior Fellow on Public Policy for the American Kratom Association said, when used correctly, it can help people wane off of opioids.

Read the story at ksnt.com

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Kratom is in the coffee family and is an herbal supplement grown mostly in southeast Asia. Some states have banned it after the federal government raised questions about its safety.

But, the problem didn’t come from the supplement, but from what unscrupulous vendors laced it with, which Florida lawmakers took the first step Tuesday to prevent from happening again.

Kratom is legal but unregulated in Florida. It is a big seller at the Natural Life chain of stores.

“And every day, we get testimonials from people how this plant has changed their life for the better. And we hear it multiple times a day, every day,” said Gabe Suarez, the owner of Natural Life.

Suarez said he requires what he sells to have been tested by a third party to ensure it’s pure and safe. “You name it, we’re searching for it.”

Keep reading at NBC.

In this policy commentary, we first take a look at the developments in Southeast Asia, where the criminalization of kratom significantly increased after Prime Minister Thaksin declared a war on drugs in Thailand in 2003.

This intensified law enforcement in the region put kratom on the radar of UNODC’s SMART programme. Yet Thailand, where repressive enforcement of the kratom ban had reached dramatic proportions following Thaksin’s drug war, moved to lift the ban in August 2021.

We then look at how kratom became an issue of concern when it was labelled a ‘New Psychoactive Substance’ (NPS) and how procedures established to expedite the scheduling process for NPS, especially UNODC’s Early Warning Advisory, propelled kratom onto the ECDD agenda.

Read the full commentary at tni.org.

A World Health Organization meeting next week could determine the future of kratom, a widely available herbal supplement some tout as an alternative to opioid painkillers, in the U.S. and elsewhere.

A 2017 survey of about 2,800 self-described kratom users in the U.S. showed that they’re typically middle-aged and white, and use the substance to treat the symptoms of anxiety, depression, pain and opioid withdrawal.

Kratom, a plant indigenous to Southeast Asia, produces narcotic-like effects when smoked or taken in liquid or capsule form. Its advocates say the substance is a promising replacement for opioids that could help wean people addicted to those drugs, which killed nearly 70,000 people in the U.S. in 2020.

Those claims have yet to be fully vetted by scientists. The U.S. government has twice tried to restrict kratom’s use by classifying it as a controlled substance, arguing it has high potential for abuse and no known medical benefit.

The full Politico article has more.

TUPELO, Miss. (WTVA) – A group of parents in Lee County are trying to keep kratom out of reach of children.

Kratom is a recreational drug that anyone can find at convenience stores or smoke shops.

Chris Hussey spoke on behalf of the group during Monday morning’s Lee County Board of Supervisors meeting.

Hussey said his 15-year-old son wasn’t the same person after he started taking kratom. A few months ago, his son disappeared in the middle of the night. Hussey and his wife found him running on the side of the road.

Hussey said he had to stop using kratom for about a week.

Sheriff Jim Johnson said he asked supervisors to ban the drug over a year ago, but they decided not to.

Read more at WTVA.

The issue of whether or not to ban kratom is an excellent litmus test of whether the Biden administration will actually use the philosophy of harm reduction to guide drug policy—or just spout the trendy catchphrase as window dressing to hide ongoing engagement in the war on drugs.

An estimated 10–16 million Americans currently use kratom as an alternative to opioids, most commonly to treat pain or as a substitute for street drugs. The herb, formally known as Mitrogyna speciosa, has a centuries-long history of use in herbal medicine in Southeast Asia—notably as a substitute for opium.

Kratom does appear to be far safer than all illegal and most prescription opioids: a CDC study of some 27,000 overdoses that occurred between 2016 and 2017 found that it was implicated in less than 1 percent of deaths.

Read more at Genetic Literacy Project.

Despite Thailand’s recent legalization of kratom—swiftly following the country’s decriminalization earlier this year—international kratom advocacy’s momentum is facing stern resistance from the United States Food and Drug Administration.

The FDA has made no secret of its attitude to the plant, following numerous attempts to schedule it as a federally illegal substance in recent years. Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the agency’s former commissioner, even groundlessly blamed kratom for “fueling the opioid addiction crisis” this past spring. While the failures of attempts at federal scheduling have represented victories for kratom advocacy, it doesn’t mean the FDA is slowing down.

In late July, the FDA publicly announced that it will be gathering feedback from the US public as part of an effort to compile data on kratom.

Continue at Filter.

Kratom advocates have rallied tens of thousands of people to submit comments to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that will help inform the U.S. position on how the substance should be classified under international law.

In October, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Expert Committee on Drug Dependence will discuss whether to recommend that kratom be globally scheduled. While FDA opened a public comment period for input that was set to end on August 9, the American Kratom Association (AKA) successfully sued for an extension that ended this week.

With those extra weeks for input, AKA’s online activist portal managed to get more than 63,000 people to share their experiences, scientific literature and recommendations encouraging the U.S. to oppose an international ban. FDA itself has logged about 26,000 comments that were directly sent in through the federal government’s own submission site.

Read more at Marijuana Moment.