> Schedule I substances are those that have the following findings:
> 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.
Almost every action the DEA has taken has worsened the opioid epidemic and benefited the Mexican cartels. They didn't require doctor licensing or tracking for lower-level pain medication, they were then slow to crack down on the pill mills - once a large part of the population was addicted, they were then very slow to license more methadone programs and suboxone doctors for the fresh wave of addicts, and now they want to shut down one of the only free and working treatment options (Kratom)
The only result you can expect from the DEA's actions are more and more opioid deaths. It is up to 18,000 a year now - over 3x as many Americans who were killed in Iraq in total - so 3 Iraq wars per year.
The NYTimes has an excellent series of stories on the opioid epidemic - the video of the woman overdosing in a supermarket while her child attempts to wake her up are shattering:
>>over 3x as many Americans who were killed in Iraq in total - so 3 Iraq wars per year.
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".
I remember listening to a rare press conference with President Bush in 2006. Someone asked him how many people had died as a result of the war in Iraq. To my genuine astonishment, he answered that approximately 60000 had died thus far. I couldn't decide whether to be more astonished at the figure, or that he had just given a straightforward answer to a direct question.
Even if you believe humans should sometimes kill each other (which is not a universally held opinion, but also not insane) you should see all loss of human life as, at best, a necessary cost. To not consider enemy casualties as a cost goes against this. To not consider civilian casualties on the other side as a cost is even worse. If killing foreign people is not considered something costly, then war becomes too easy a choice for the countries with the most powerful armies.
Actually, that would be fine. The US doesn't need the world to pay attention to its opioid overdose problems. The world has enough problems to focus on, like millions of people still dying from malaria, or a billion people without access to clean running water or electricity. The US has plenty of tax revenue - ~$6.6 trillion annually, larger than Japan's entire economy - to deal with the problem completely on its own.
Sucrose is used widely in medical treatment in the United States.
Use of sucrose under medical supervision is unfathomably safe. You can literally feel, in your hand, the quantity of sucrose which is unsuitable for your diet.
I'm not sure what would qualify as abuse, but I'm pretty sure they don't consider all recreational alcohol use to be abuse even though a pretty large chunk of the people who drink it are alcoholics.
>> Schedule I substances are those that have the following >>findings:
>> 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.
The delivery method matters. It's not accurate to consider the dangers of kratom just by looking at the dangers of the active chemicals. One important difference is that when consuming the kratom leaf, you will get nauseous and throw up before you can overdose, assuming kratom is the only depressant you're taking.
You talk about chemicals being "stronger" than others, but what that means is that it requires lower doses to achieve the same effect, not that its inherently more dangerous. My understanding is that mitrogynine opioids cause less respiratory depression than comparable levels of morphine. I think that there is a pharmaceutical product derived from some mitrogynine opioid that's prescribed because of its relatively low risk of making users stop breathing.
I don't know what you mean by "serious drug", but why are you so keen to regulate something that doesn't have much evidence of causing damage? The purpose of regulation should not be to stop people from getting high. I'd prefer much less regulation of all drugs, but I can understand regulating for the sake of the collective good: to avoid public health crises, to limit the number of addicts who become burdens of the state. There isn't evidence that kratom is hurting the collective good though, so why limit people's freedom?
It is extremely misleading to compare the binding affinity of a partial mu opioid agonist with profoundly different molecular structure to the binding affinity of a full mu opioid agonist. Mitragynine is not 13x more potent than morphine in any effect observed in vivo. Preliminary research shows that the novel binding mechanism of mitragynine results in drastically different effects (supposedly by selective avoidance of beta arrestin activation). For instance, it does not cause respiratory depression to a significant extent in mammals.
Thyroid dysfunction and liver damage have never been demonstrated in a study, and anecdotal reports do not seem to suggest that they occur.
The deaths in Sweden were attributed to an isolated metabolite of tramadol that is sold as a research chemical and was mixed into powdered kratom leaf. There is no evidence that kratom contributed to those deaths.
I encourage you to read the "Talk" section of the Wikipedia page before repeating claims in the article without context.
The effects of kratom are extremely mild, you vomit quickly if you take too much, the withdrawal symptoms are comparable to caffeine, and there has never been a death attributed to kratom alone.
Sorry, but as someone who has used Kratom many times I will tell you that I get more high off a morning espresso than off of Kratom. It's far less of a serious drug than alcohol or marijuana, I can say that much.
It really isn't a course reversal, the people holding the purse strings seemed to have forced the DEA's hand into extending the period of public comment.
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.
For those that may have read this comment and found it strangely familiar, I'll save you the trouble googling. It appears oxide regularly comments on opiate related threads, so his above anecdote isn't a copy of someone else's comment - it is just him re-stating his experiences he has posted before.
I mean no criticism of your story oxide; merely commenting for those who thought something might be awry.
I suppose I did start parroting what I said last time I commented here on kratom thread, yeesh.
I ought to have qualified it with a disclaimer if I was just going to repeat myself. I feel it's decent basic information on kratom for the uninitiated, but I didn't mean to parrot myself like that. It's been a long week.
The powdered leaf also tastes like ass, and to take enough to feel anything is a bit like doing a saltine challenge, so its also self-regulating in that way :)
I'd argue that an opiate naive individual on 10g of red vein would be feeling VERY mad nice, considering that dose has me, not opiate naive, feeling mad nice. Definitely at the very least as strong a feeling as codeine
I haven't taken that high of a dose, nor have I taken red vein, but the guidelines I've read suggest that at 10g you're likely to experience uncomfortable levels of nausea if you don't have tolerance.
I agree, you'll likely puke if you are opiate-naive and try to "toss-n-wash" (swallow a spoonful of leaf with a thick juice) 1/3rd of an ounce of powdered kratom leaf.
someone like that should start with just a few grams, approximately a teaspoonful. it's also normal to not feel anything at all the first few times you take it.
for someone opiate dependent, that dose is enough to halt the physical symptoms of withdrawal and alleviate some of the emotional symptoms, albeit for a short time. if you want to quit opiate abuse badly enough, that's just about all you need.
I don't agree with the ban, but it seems like the risks of kratom are not discussed, and in fact even downplayed by saying hey, it's just a plant.
To help me be an informed reader I would like WaPo to mention:
1) If you search kratom withdrawal there are a ton of anecdotal reports that sound pretty unpleasant if not debilitating.
2) What is the frequency of severe side effects, as best as can be known?
3) That "natural" substances or "plants" are not always safe. This misconception is so common and dangerous it shouldn't be used to mock the ban (real logic will suffice). https://web.stanford.edu/~jpc/overture.htm
There are plenty of valid reasons to argue against a ban. For example the chill on research, the low rate of fatalities, the likelihood it will make use more dangerous, and the probability a ban would have no net benefits.
Kratom withdrawal is unpleasant. Debilitating withdrawal is uncommon in people that aren't taking heroic doses to self medicate their addictions to other opiates, therefore punting the withdrawal symptoms down the road. Acute kratom withdrawal is shorter than for long acting pharmaceutical opiates, but post acute withdrawal syndrome (PAWS) can be dragged out because kratom has some poorly documented and poorly understood non-opiate-related antidepressant actions. It has unusually complicated pharmacology with interesting combinations of conflicting, competing, and synergistic mechanisms.
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.
I, unfortunately, have extensive experience with kratom and kratom extracts. Today, I am 5 years clean of kratom and all narcotics.
I bought the "kratom is non-addictive and can improve your life" line fully as a teenager. What ensued was indistinguishable from a full blown opiate addiction. I ended up in in-patient detox to finally quit and, five years later, have not regained all that I had lost during that time.
Just because kratom has a high threshold for overdose does not mean it is not an opioid.
Absolutely. Propaganda from both sides of the debate results in confusing and sometimes harmful information. I don't claim that kratom is without harm. I claim that from a public health perspective, kratom reduces harm by trading off with drugs that cause more harm.
I only have about 4 years off and on experience with powdered leaf but would never touch the extracts. It is similar to the difference between having a single beer and drinking vodka straight from the bottle.
Kratom has helped me a lot with sticking to an exercise routine and sleep. I try to never exceed 8 grams of powdered leaf a day. When I hit that, I taper off and take a break for 1-2 months.
When I take kratom I dose 2x a day. Drop by .25 or .50 grams for each dose. When each dose is 2 grams, I switch to dosing 3 grams 1x a day. Right before bed. Then I just taper that down at the same rate.
When I get to 0.5 grams per day, I just stop. I may sleep a little less and feel a little irritable for a few days but then it's back to normal. Working out every day and abstaining from sugary foods eliminates any remaining withdrawal symptoms in my experience.
And there is strong evidence that Kratom curtails alcohol addiction. Kratom is amazing. It has anti-depressive effects that once fully understand I believe will usher in a new and vastly superior wave of anti-depressants. To schedule 1 this plant is beyond insane. Banning it is the bunny brained idea of a lunatic. The DEA is completely out of touch with reality or some special interest is pulling their strings.
Really? I tried doing this search and can't find much. I'm pretty up on the state of the scientific literature on kratom, because I'm in the industry, curious, and have been actively working at improving the dreadful wikipedia article.
Even the peer reviewed evidence for kratom working for opiate withdrawal is quite weak, despite boatloads of anecdotal evidence. There are studies in mice and some observational studies, but nothing that meets the standards of an FDA clinical trial. Kratom has just not really been seriously studied.
If I'm missing some papers or a body of research, please let me know.
Sorry, I thought I was replying to a thread about kratom's efficacy on pain, not alcohol dependence. Not sure if I hit reply on the wrong thread or just misread it!
Long term kratom use can cause a dependence, and the withdrawals are very very similar to heroin/morphine withdrawals.
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.
This is ridiculous! First, please become informed before posting on a subject you clearly know little about. Second, in your "aforementioned" comment, you did not differentiate between uei and plain leaf kratom. This means you are either a "plant", or just a complete m. I know first-hand that coming off daily use of plain leaf kratom is a cakewalk compared to pharmaceuticals like methadone. Kratom is very similar to stopping your daily cup of coffee. You do not have 2 weeks of severe withdrawal nor do you have years in a state of PAWS. Also, if you think man made drugs like methadone are safer than natural substances like kratom, you need to head back to your big pharma office. Kratom is safe when taken in moderation. It will not kill you DEAD because when you take too much, it induces the users to vomit. It does not cause a complete shutdown of your cns! And when used daily for anxiety or other ailments, it is much safer than big pharmas "non natural" poisons. All big pharma concoctions can kill you and "accidental" overdoses occur every minute in the US on a daily basis. You are wrong and I question the sincerity of your comment.
> withdrawals are very very similar to heroin/morphine withdrawals
Source please.
Anecdotal evidence from those that have gone through both heroin and kratom withdrawals generally say coming off kratom is extremely easy by comparison.
It's also worth noting that, anecdotally (and I include myself here), for many people coming off kratom is easier than stopping drinking coffee.
Most modern nations accept opiate substitution therapy (OST) as the most effective way to treat opiod addiction. The entire premise of OST is that you substitute a bad opiate for a "less bad" opiate - and Kratom is looking like one of the best "least bad" candidates we've ever seen.
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.
Your first paragraph I completely agree, Kratom is promising to be safer than the leading opiate substitution medicines (ie methadone)
But
> it has no value as a recreational drug.
is completely wrong. See the erowid page [1].
Some of the positive effects (Simultaneous stimulation & sedation, Feelings of euphoria, Useful with physical labor,
Low doses can result in a lasting "glow" in some people, increases sociability and talkativeness) have high recreational value. Personally I find it great as an alternative to harsher stimulants for getting a lot of work done.
You're right - it's not "no value" it is "little value" - altho of the people I know who have used kratom to get off stronger painkillers all referred to a natural tapering effect that kratom has where you don't want to keep taking it outside of withdrawal
Seems that for some people the downsides of kratom outweigh the positives outside of treating withdrawal.
Do you think it's the Subutex and Methodone manufacturers using legal muscle since they can't patent and monopolize this alternative? Reckitt Benckiser, maker of Suboxone has fought hard against generics being available.
I will save my criticism of the moral implication of such a position because the English language doesn't provide me enough words to express it.
Think if Reckitt had any sway they'd want loosening of the restrictions on doctors to prescribe suboxone. Currently only 10,000 of the 800,000 doctors in the USA are prescribing suboxone - wait lists are long and the per-doctor cap is rising very slowly.
Yeah, those restrictions are a completely insufficient response to the growing problems.
I had a friend fighting heroin addiction live on my couch for a year while I tried using my money and time to help him through.
The biggest problems (now we are getting off topic) are
* lack of recovery groups for atheists. The conventional twelve step programs claim they'll work for atheists but the act of faith plays such a crucial and fundamental role, that someone who is faithless really won't work in the program.
* an unspoken internal conflict of process. Institutions of rehab strongly disagree on methodology and there's this culture where most seem to have one elaborate and very specific process. Using multiple resources can be mutually exclusive and impossible.
* rehab in general is structured terribly. The reality is that someone serious about recovery ends up living with a bunch of strangers who may not be. It's like a zombie movie, one bad apple can spoil the bunch. There has to be a better way.
* a lack of reliable or convenient access to medication. These people know how to get street drugs. When they have to travel 30 miles and show up between 6 and 7:30 am to get methadone while heroin is an SMS away and gets delivered, there's a problem.
>Nobody is delusional about the effects of Kratom or downsides
Not true. There are many articles being written in the same spirit as the Washington Post. They are using a headline to discourage caution because something is a plant - that's false and delusional.
In medicine, you have to show a drug is more effective (or as effective) and is as safe as existing drugs for a purpose in order to get FDA approval. Why not take a similar stance on drugs for recreational purposes? If it is as safe or safer than alcohol or tobacco, approve it.
Au contraire, a substance should only be banned from consumption if it is shown to be highly addictive, and life-threatening if overconsumed. Or something like that. I don't believe something should be banned until presumed completely safe.
It is pretty rare for anyone to get addicted to a drug after one dose. Even for things like heroin. I think I've read that at most, there is a 25% chance of addiction. Still high, but still below the thresh hold. But admittedly, it is rather hard to sort out fact from propaganda here. (and heroin does have that second one, I'm guessing).
This has been done. Mitragynine and 7-OH-mitragyine (the primary alkaloids in kratom) do not recruit β-arrestin[1], which os what causes typical opioid side effects - including respiratory depression. It is this that kills when you overdose on almost every other known opioid drug. This really is huge deal.
Less importantly, but still relevant, it also doesn't cause anywhere near the level of constipation that pharmaceutical opioid drugs cause.
It also activates both mu and delta opioid receptors, which is perhaps why I personally find it is so much more effective for neuropathic pain than the more common mu-opiod pharmaceutical drugs.
Tobacco and alcohol are unusually dangerous in the scheme of drugs. I don't disagree with your intention to relax restrictions behind drugs, but if this logic was followed, nearly every drug would be legalized, which is not the goal of the government of the USA.
If that is true, and your end goal is truly safety, why doesn't the FDA and DEA advocate for the criminalization of those drugs as well? I have been told that the argument is that prohibition caused violence and crime, but so does the prohibition of heroin so that logic doesn't seem to hold.
> Unfortunately, in the United States I don't think we have a good regulatory framework for handling this situation
Why do we even need a regulatory framework? It's a plant: let people grow it if they want; let them ingest it if they want. Heck, let them crush the eaves and smear them all over their bodies while singing, 'Happy days are here again!' if that's what they want. That's what freedom is about: letting folks do their thing.
It's interesting because this gets into the entire "Do you have a right to your own body?" debate.
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.
The age old problem of policy is how to design a system that catches the opportunists without accidentally capturing the altruists (not the right word but you get what I mean).
The hard drugs have ugly consequences for their users, and for their society as a whole. Look at how the Japanese in WWII legalized all drugs in China, and made heroin, in particular, cheap and easily available; they wanted to corrode the substance of Chinese civil society, and they did.
Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001 and they seem to be doing very well with it and have very few drug overdose related deaths. They have [3 deaths per million citizens](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/05/why-h...). I wouldn't be surprised if we had more drug enforcement related deaths in the US.
Portugal is also a _much_ smaller country, with less wealth inequality and systematic racial/socioeconomic divisions related to crime, poverty, drug use, etc. I'm not saying we shouldn't relax the drug laws in the US, but I don't think it's fair to assume that just because it works in Portugal it would work just as well here.
My rule of thumb is, "would I rather be in a room full of people on X (a variable, not the drug) or a room full of people on beer?" If the answer is X, which it almost always is, then I would rather make X more legally and socially acceptable than beer.
On the flip side, this drug and marajuana have marginal negative affects beyond being reactionally impared, which being very tired can also do. Are they going to outlaw being awake for more than 20 hours next?
I'm not American so forgive me if this is a silly question but isn't/shouldn't the responsibility for evaluating the safety and approval of foods and drugs belong to the FDA?
Isn't the DEA being in charge of this like the FBI passing laws?
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.
As far as the FDA is concerned, this is an herbal supplement. As such, there is very little oversight. Occasionally they ban supplements, but only after a long while and a good number of deaths. For it to be used legitamately as a drug, something prescribed, a company must go through all the animal testing and trials and whatnot. To count as a supplement, it might have to go through some things as well. This particular plant seemed that it was in a somewhat grey area - not quite a supplement (officially), yet not as inert as lettuce.
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.
The DEA has the power to schedule newly developed, dangerous synthetic drugs without immediate congressional oversight, the idea being that chemists can design and bring to market new, dangerous drugs more quickly than Congress is able to act.
They overstepped their authority in attempting to schedule kratom, as it is old, natural, and not particularly dangerous.
The idea that law enforcement agencies must be able to write their own law on the fly is the root of a lot of evil, not just in this case. Usually, they're not really in a hurry. They just want less oversight.
We can't wait for Congress because Congress is too slow! (Well, this one does make some sense as Congress seems to be deadlocked all the time...)
We need warrantless wiretaps and NSLs because it takes too long to get a warrant!
We need to detain people without a warrant because, again, we have no time to go find a judge!
We need to torture these terrorists because the next attack might come any minute and who doesn't like Jack Bauer?
Right. And I think the parent asked a really good question: isn't the power of regulating what foods and drugs are safe for the populace to consume a responsibility that was delegated to the USFDA, not the DEA?
If the DEA does have this power … isn't there overlap between the FDA and the DEA?
the answer is simple: the FDA is not a police agency and the DEA is.
their domains overlap because the prohibition culture of the U.S. government does not treat "drugs" rationally (i.e. as if they were simply medicines) but rather has tied the entire concept up in a gordian knot of fear, racism, social engineering, and in-group selection.
similarly, alcohol and tobacco, despite obviously being "drugs" even according to the logic of the federal government bureaucracy, are given their own police agency as well, because the DEA was tasked with persecuting hippies and brown-skinned people, whereas the ATF was tasked with shooting up disobedient white people.
For an understanding of how America got to its current circumstance regarding drugs, I strongly recommend a book, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, by Johann Hari.
Really the problem is that scheduling a drug makes it illegal (or at least, incredibly difficult) to do research on. I'm not a fan of drug regulation either, but even considering the standpoint of those that are, letting these things be responsibly handled by professional medical development scientists sounds like a win-win situation.
As with all things in Washington, I'd follow the money. I'd wager someone with a lot of milk to spill lobbied hard to get the scheduling move reversed. I wouldn't buy for a second that the needs of recovering addicts had anything to do with it. The DEA has made it abundantly clear that it gives exactly zero fucks about the facts regarding the narcotics it regulates or the consequences for lay people of their regulation.
Paranoid speculation: The DEA was given a secret brief to ban a substance that would help addicts withdraw from an addiction. Consider who actually benefits from this ban: Various policing powers, and drug cartels, who depend on addicts staying that way.
Having written that, I don't believe it. But on the other hand . . .
More likely the 12-steppers and religious zealots who feel that all recreational drug/alcohol induced highs are wrong, and should be stopped/illegal. There's been a lot of fighting against anything that works to end addiction through medical research/means. In addition to those who think all recreational drugs should be outlawed.
Followedby another brief indicating such a ban would adversely affect pharmaceutical companies.
"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."
I don't think there was a conspiracy here. I think the most likely thing is that DEA is sincerely trying to do something about the opiate epidemic in America, and made a misguided and poorly researched attempt to ban kratom because they thought that would help the opiate epidemic.
"The DEA is not one to second-guess itself, no matter what the facts are."
That's such a sad reflection on American culture. People here value firm, decisive leaders that stick to their principles, even if they're wrong, over people more apt to listen to all sides of the story and re-evaluate their positions over time (because the latter people somehow look "weak" -- even the wording of "second-guess" corroborates this).
The fact that any federal agency, let alone the DEA, walked back a proposal in the face of public outcry is a real sign that positive change is happening, albeit slowly and subtly. If Obama were white, he would go down in history as one of the great presidents, despite his flaws, which are probably still better than those of other greats like FDR.
Is there any indication that the White House had any influence on this? The last I checked the only places the DEA has stopped their programs is in countries they've been kicked out of for causing more harm than good. Otherwise outside of reducing handpicked domestic crack sentences there hasn't been much revision of drug policy in the last 8 yrs.
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.
> 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?
Obama made the decision that the DEA/DOJ would let state legalizations continue[1], at least unless it became clearly problematic. I and many others assume that he's not opposed to legalization and is letting the states be the laboratories for democracy that they should be. I also think this would never have happened in the previous administrations, and Obama is behind more of it than you seem to be giving him credit for. He's just not coming forward as an explicit supporter because it would detract from his support outside of his base supporters.
Despite Obama's words it sounds like business as usual in Colorado if you've been following the news since then. Raids continue all the time in Colorado (including last month) and the banks keep getting pressured to not support the industry due to federal policy which has practically crippled growth.
Just this month the DEA openly blamed the legal companies following state laws as the source of criminality and baselessly dismiss the medical science behind it:
The DOJ is still prosecuting these cases too. So again I wouldn't hand out any prizes over just talk.
They've also made a number of tough statements against Wall st excess, mass surveillance, mass incarceration, etc. Should we reward that as well? Unless you look at the data and continued actions/policies of federal agencies you'll just be rewarding talk and the bare minimum of action to appease voter bases. Which doesn't get us anywhere. Low standards = bad results.
It feels good to still be in business at http://www.getkratom.com after all these years. There has definitely been a Streisand Effect from all of the DEA's attention but I don't think it was worth the stress.
The article's original title needed editing to fix within the length limits, so the edited title from the submitter was likely just an accident or minor mistake. We've just updated it to clarify.
I think it's still grammatically correct. "withdraw" can be a verb; in this form it would be interpreted to mean "to leave from a place" (e.g., "the troops are withdrawing"). However, the title, as currently written, certainly doesn't mean what it was intended to mean.
I.e., the way I'm parsing it is "(the DEA is leaving/retreating (to where isn't specified); once there, they're going to ban another plant); this occurred after the Internet got mad."
> 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.
Almost every action the DEA has taken has worsened the opioid epidemic and benefited the Mexican cartels. They didn't require doctor licensing or tracking for lower-level pain medication, they were then slow to crack down on the pill mills - once a large part of the population was addicted, they were then very slow to license more methadone programs and suboxone doctors for the fresh wave of addicts, and now they want to shut down one of the only free and working treatment options (Kratom)
The only result you can expect from the DEA's actions are more and more opioid deaths. It is up to 18,000 a year now - over 3x as many Americans who were killed in Iraq in total - so 3 Iraq wars per year.
The NYTimes has an excellent series of stories on the opioid epidemic - the video of the woman overdosing in a supermarket while her child attempts to wake her up are shattering:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/28/us/addicted-parents-get-th...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/08/opinion/sunday/how-doctors...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/well/family/opioids-may-in...