As a Licensed Mental Health Professional , I urge you to keep Kratom legal and work with the American Kratom Association(AKA) to develop a Kratom consumer protection act (KCPA). This way you’re actually doing your job and ensuring your citizens are safe when they consume a Kratom product; if you ban Kratom what do you think will happen? Sorry to point out the obvious, but what will happen is that you will have an influx of street drug and alcohol overdoses because people will go back to drinking alcohol, or using street drugs which Kratom helped them get off of so they could actually live their lives again. I see this everyday. A lot of people are alive today because of this plant Kratom.

Also, if Kratom is banned the black market will flood itself with Kratom that is not lab tested for safety(when you could have prevented this by setting up the framework in the form of the American Kratom Association’s KCPA.) and it will become random powdered plants that are sprayed with research chemical opioids or depressants such as ODSMT, -Zenes, research chemical/designer drug benzodiazepines, or fentanyl analogues that malicious people will call ‘Kratom’ when in reality it’s not Kratom it’s something else- this will harm people. A ban on Kratom will inadvertently kill thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people, or cause individuals to seek out harmful alternatives which leads to criminal behavior, death, and physical/mental health concerns. Seems like you’re trying to profit off of substance abuse clinics and the substance abuse crisis. Though, I doubt that’s the case. You care about your citizens. If you truly care about your citizens, you will listen to them and individuals from other states who use Kratom; as to not set an ignorant precedent. Then, do your due diligence and take time to educate yourselves. 

The Kratom consumer protection act enacts lab testing requirements and age restrictions on who can buy Kratom; in addition to labeling requirements for the packaging. Plus more to keep Kratom users safe from adulterated Kratom products.  

If you say Kratom is dangerous, it’s because there are Kratom products on the market that are “laced” or adulterated/contaminated with non-Kratom alkaloids- research chemical/“designer drug” opioids that can be as potent as fentanyl or more potent. Labs cannot detect these novel compounds because in order to detect a compound there has to be an analytical standard (a sample of the chemical being tested for). If toxicology shows that someone has died from “Mitragynine toxicity” that is 99%(this statistic in particular is fictional to express a point) of the time not the case. It’s some research chemical opioid made in china that no one has heard of, not ‘mitragynine toxicity’ and there are hundreds of thousands of different variations of these research chemical opioids that can be made in these Chinese labs. Do you remember “Spice/K2”? The same thing will happen, but worse. If the Kratom plant, mitragynine, and 7-hydroxy-mitragynine are kept legal and accessible to all then people will be safe.

The other 1%(this statistic in particular is fictional to express a point)  where someone has been harmed by consuming Kratom are people who naturally are allergic to Kratom and its alkaloids or who take it along side pharmaceutical drugs that have interactions with it that are dangerous (we only know of a few one of which is an antihistamine); these people who supposedly get harmed by consuming Kratom is a minuscule number of your total population and the total population of the US. Mitragynine, Kratom leaf, and 7-Hydroxy-Mitragynine(7HO) are safe for health adults, and keeping it legal is safer than banning it. Kratom, mitragynine, and 7-hydroxy-Mitragynine DO NOT recruit beta-arrestin, which is the chemical that causes respiratory depression and death from opioids and opiates. Kratom, Mitragynine, and 7-Hydroxy-Mitragynine DO NOT do this. It’s in the most current research on Kratom. Kratomanswers.org

According to the LD-50 research, in order for a 150lb person to have a 50% chance of dying by consuming Kratom leaf alone, one would have to consume ~6lbs or 3kg of Kratom powder in one sitting. That’s impossible. Then, for mitragynine (the dominate alkaloid in the plant Kratom) someone who is 150lbs would have to consume 32 grams of pure isolated mitragynine. This would cost over $1,000 to purchase IF an individual could find a vendor who sells this pure of mitragynine. The person would have to be deliberately trying to harm themselves. Go pour 32g of sugar in a ziplock bag and see how much that is. Now imagine spending $1,000 or more on that- if you try to consume it all in one sitting you have a much more serious problem, and a plant is not to blame. That’s like trying to ban Tylenol because people die from the use of it, or hurt their liver. It’s an inanimate object. We wouldn’t ban Tylenol, because millions and millions of people use it without harming themselves. Same goes for alcohol, and people die from alcohol use everyday. 

The hypocrisy with this ban on Kratom you intend on doing is laughable, because if you’re trying to ban Kratom you have no idea what you’re talking about from a pharmacological standpoint, a mental health standpoint, nor a drug trend standpoint(being able to have the foresight to see how this will impact drug trends). You keep alcohol on store shelves. You keep Tylenol in pharmacies OTC, and on other store shelves just like the majority of other states and the rest of the world; these chemicals(alcohol and tylenol) are more dangerous than Kratom. Period. 

At the very least, stop and look at how many people die from alcohol every year and compare that to the supposed ‘Kratom deaths’. It’s illogical to try to ban Kratom, it is a safe plant for healthy adults.

***Every patient who has disclosed they use Kratom to me has been able to increase their ability to fulfill responsibilities to themselves, their families, and their community since using Kratom. When before they couldn’t. If you ban Kratom you will do much more harm than good, and if you don’t believe that, do the research and listen to the people.

www.Kratomanswers.org