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The DEA is withdrawing a proposal to ban another plant citing public outcry

washingtonpost.com

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Re: The DEA is withdrawing a proposal to ban another plant citing public outcry

#21

Post by cmdrfred »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #14

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 "natur…

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.

Re: The DEA is withdrawing a proposal to ban another plant citing public outcry

#23

Post by rms »

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.

I think I liked this article the most from the wave of press today. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/14/kratom-dea-b...

I'm one of the moderators of https://www.reddit.com/r/kratom/ , check it out if you want to keep up with news and community sentiment on this topic.

Re: The DEA is withdrawing a proposal to ban another plant citing public outcry

#25

Post by rublev »

wtbob wrote: post #12

> 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 folk…

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).

Re: The DEA is withdrawing a proposal to ban another plant citing public outcry

#26

Post by ajmurmann »

clock_tower wrote: post #15
wtbob wrote: post #12

> 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 folk…

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.

Re: The DEA is withdrawing a proposal to ban another plant citing public outcry

#27

Post by unethical_ban »

cmdrfred wrote: post #21
WhitneyLand wrote: post #14

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 "natur…

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.

Re: The DEA is withdrawing a proposal to ban another plant citing public outcry

#28

Post by rms »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #14

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 "natur…

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.

Re: The DEA is withdrawing a proposal to ban another plant citing public outcry

#29

Post by cshimmin »

ajmurmann wrote: post #26
clock_tower wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: The DEA is withdrawing a proposal to ban another plant citing public outcry

#30

Post by rms »

kabdib wrote: post #11

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 . . .

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.
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