Why Would Regulators Ban An Herbal Treatment For Recovering Opioid Addicts?

(From The Federalist)

Curtis, a disabled infantry Army vet, said he was put on pharmaceuticals to help with PTSD and opiate painkillers to manage his chronic pain. “It was a pretty bad time for me…I decided to give [Kratom] a try, and within the first two hours of having my first spoonful, my pain was almost completely gone. Over the first few weeks, my crushing depression and anxiety had started to go away.” He says now he doesn’t take any other medications and can provide for his family.

Ash says she uses Kratom to treat chronic pain from Lyme disease and broke her addiction to opioids with its help. Many other non-veterans testified to its efficacy in managing pain. One woman, 48, wrote, “I suffer excruciating, haneous [sic], debilitating pain EVERY minute of every day. Kratom stopped it dead in its tracks. I am now LIVING. I work again, I’m a mother again, a wife again.”…

…Thousands of such consumers spoke out when in August 2016 the DEA notified the public of its intent to add the alkaloids mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine to the Schedule I category, a decision “necessary to avoid an imminent hazard to the public safety.” This would have put the ancient herb from Southeast Asia in such unsavory company as heroin, ecstasy, marijuana, and other drugs determined by the DEA to have, “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”

The DEA has the power to immediately ban a drug, then issue permits for its use as they see fit. Placing Kratom in the Schedule I category may seem drastic considering its comparatively mild nature to other Schedule I drugs, but that’s the only category into which DEA can place drugs if it wants to ban them quickly without express permission from Congress.

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