Hi,

My name is Bud Smith. I started taking pills when I was 13. To handle my life and the abuse I endured. I spent 17 years doing all kinds of drugs illegal, legal, alcohol, and perscriptions. Abusing all of them. I have a list of all the perscriptions I have been given by doctors for my ptsd, anxiety, depression, paranoia, adhd, and autism. The list of perscriptions is about 150 perscriptions. Sometimes 4 at a time. None of them helped me ever. I spent a good 5 years waking up everyday wanting to kill myself and I tried. I couldn't keep jobs, I had 0 personal items because I sold them all for drugs. I did countless bad things for drugs. I found kratom 6 years ago and have been clean off of everything for 5 1/2 years includes alcohol. I also quit smoking pot 20 months ago. I wake up every morning happier than I ever been. I keep a job, I have a house and two vehicles.  It's not just my life that has been saved. It's my four kids and wife. All my life people have always left me because who I was. Now I have a family that will never leave me. That's not because of them. It's because of me. I changed myself. I work full time and go to the gym 3 to 5 times a week. Taking kratom away would not only take me away from my family, it would take 15 million Americans away from thier family. 1/3 of the people using kratom as a tool are taking to stay off pain pills. Making kratom illegal wouldn't do anything positive. Kratom is the key to stopping the opioid epidemic. The reason the FDA is making kratom sound so bad is because kratom is taking away from thier pill business. The fda makes 14 billion per year. The pharmaceutical industry has made over 2 trillion dollars in the past 20 years. While alcohol kills 140,000 deaths per year and cigarettes 490,000 deaths per year. Kratom kills 0 per year. Pure unadulterated kratom kills no one. The real reason it's looked at badly and lied about is because people cannot profit off of it. 

Thank you for reading this