I would strongly suggest that you watch the documentary "Leaf of Faith" (maybe available on netflix) to learn about kratom. 

Kratom is a plant that has been used in SE Asia for thousands of years for pain management.  In all that time, not one person has ever died from it.  Not one.

I have been taking kratom daily for 6-8 years without a problem.  Currently, I take 15 size 0 pills, 3x a day.  I have taken as many as 60 size 0 pills in a single sitting with no ill effects.

Kratom has mitigated my chronic pain from degenerative disc disorder, allowing me to function.  Prior to taking it, most days I could barely walk. Opioids didn't work for me, not that you can get them anymore.  In addition, as a person who has suffered from lifelong depression, I can no longer get depressed.

It is the best, and often only, tool for chronic pain management left for people.  You can correlate the rise in the popularity of Kratom to the crackdown on opioid prescriptions, leaving people with chronic pain no other options.  If you make it schedule 1, you will leave those people with no options at all, other than to break the law so that they can function.

Let's look at all of the big scare tactics used by those pressing for the ban:

1) It works on the opioid receptors!!!!  Yes, but the difference is that with opioids, those receptors are wide open, letting in an unlimited amount.  With kratom, they only allow in a certain amount, making it impossible to overdose.  But that is one of the biggest benefits from it.  People use kratom to break their opioid addiction. When I first started taking kratom, I was looking for an energy boost due to long working hours, only after did I discover the pain relief.  The store I purchased it from said that everybody else who bought it were opioid addicts using it to break their addiction.  In this regards alone, we shouldn't be banning kratom, the state should be promoting it.  We have an over the counter herb that allows people to quickly and easily break their opioid addiction, which addicts know about and are doing, and this petition wants to make it illegal in all cases.

2) People are getting high off of it. Impaired judgement. Etc.   No.  I have taken 60 size 0 pills in one sitting and I can tell you that you can get a much larger "buzz" or sense of euphoria from taking too many caffeine pills. I stupidly took a sheet (or 2) of Vivarin once when I was younger and I was WAY more messed up than when I took 60 pills of kratom.  On kratom, my hair/scalp got a little tingly. That was it. No mental or physical impairments at all. 

Name ANY OTC drug that you can take 60 of, in a single sitting, with no ill effects.  Any single one of them.  Sixty aspirin will kill you. So kratom is safer than aspirin, and 10000% more effective.  I'm guessing that if 60 Nyquil pills don't kill you, you will be able to taste colors.

3) It causes suicide.  Not true at all.  It is an amazing anti-depressant that most likely kept me from becoming suicidal as I was on the verge of a negative spiral when I started taking it and haven't been depressed since then.  The actual stories behind those claims tend to go like "my son suffered from severe depression, in and out of hospitals for 10 years, then he started taking kratom and a year later he killed himself. It was kratom's fault".  I understand a parent's need to blame something, so they blame kratom with absolutely zero evidence to support it.  The rise in popularity of kratom means that more people, with existing mental health problems, are trying kratom.  Statistically, some of them will eventually commit suicide. Correlation, not causation.

4) There are XXXX poisoning cases. Ok, 60 size 0 pills has no ill effects, so are people taking 2 or 3 measuring cups of it?  Are they boiling it down into a tea and drinking a gallon of it?  What is the effect of eating 2-3 cups of table salt or dissolving it into water and drinking it? Poisoning?  "But people know better than to drink 2 cups of table salt".  And only idiots try to take an unlimited amount of any drug.  In enough quantity, literally everything become poisonous.  What is the effect of taking an entire bottle of magnesium supplements?  Probably a trip to the emergency room.

You can't completely police stupidity. How many emergency room cases per year are there of people who ate or tried to smoke too much nutmeg trying to chase a high?  And 50 other items that you can buy in any grocery store in America that will, or is rumored to, give a person a "high" if they take enough of it.  Glue, paint, turpentine, whip-its, nutmeg, are those are going to be schedule 1 also?

5) It's addictive.  Yes, it is. However, it is very easy to quit. When I want to reduce how much I am taking, I simply cut back by 1 pill per day. (15/15/15, 15/15/14, 15/14/14, etc).  No ill effects, no withdrawal symptoms.  I've been trying to quit smoking for over 6 months, including using drugs and the patch.  Still not there.  I cut my kratom intake in 1/2, by cutting back 1 pill per day.

At one point, I had to "crash" off of it.  I was cutting back by 6 pills per day.  What does that withdrawal do?  It makes your major muscles (biceps, thighs, calves) feel like they need to be stretched. It basically made me do a lot of pushups and leg stretches.  Over a period of about 10 days, I had to stop reducing my intake for a day to "stabilize", and by day 2 I was fine to continue reducing my intake.  "Crashing" off of it was uncomfortable, but beyond needing to stretch and do push-ups, I had no other effects.

In large doses, taking 30/30/20, aside from needing to be very consistent in taking it, or having to do push-ups, the only side-effects I had was minor dehydration, like opioids minor constipation, and the feeling like there was something slightly sticky between my fingers from time to time.

Since I have cut back to 15/15/15, I have missed entire doses without needing to do push-ups and the sticky feeling between my fingers went away entirely.

I haven't done it, but I am guessing that going cold turkey from taking large doses is miserable, but also goes away in a day or 2 as quickly reducing the amount you take will stabilize after a single day.  Considering I have missed entire doses while taking 15 pills, and not noticed, I doubt going cold turkey would be too traumatic.  Easing off it it by 1 pill a day is easy.  I literally don't notice at all.

Salt, sugar, caffeine, and nicotine are all highly addictive. Even more so than kratom, yet available everywhere.

6) Why is this petition being put forth?  Is it from people who have no idea, never tried it, and are just subject to fearmongering?  Like the people who claim that pot makes users go crazy and become ultra violent?

Is it because the pharmaceutical industry can't patent a plant, so they want it banned until they can synthesize it and sell it and 10000% markup?

Are either of those a good reason to ban it?

In conclusion, don't ban kratom.  It is growing in popularity because it works. People with chronic pain have been left with no other options and the likely outcome will end up being that thousands will be sent to prison for just trying to function.  You will also be banning one of the best tools available to fight the opioid epidemic.  One that people are actually using right now.

There is huge upside to keeping kratom legal and virtually no downside at all.

Don't fall for the fearmongering, because that is all that it is. Pure fearmongering. Plain and simple.