DEA and FDA to soon rule on Kratom

a reply to: rickymouse

Yes, and you can drink too much water and get toxicity from that.

The question is context and contrast.

If someone is in pain, should we give them something highly addictive, and harmful to their body, or something more natural and safer.

The fact is, doctors can't prescribe you this as an alternative because it's considered wacky to prescribe someone something that isn't synthesized.

originally posted by: rickymouse
I read some info on Kratom but the info was all over the place as to it's being a safe medicine to use. I consider it a medicine myself, one that could be abused if no regulations are in place. Opioids are natural, so is coc aine, they are also plant defense system chemicals meant to protect the plant in various ways. They work as medicines but in the wild they cause disruptive effects on animals which may lead to their death if they consume them or cause them to fight with other animals effectively killing off the population of animals browsing on the plants.

There are side effects to all medicines. I will not comment much on it till I see good evidence to show it is good or bad, not someone's opinion on the Kratom. Sometimes side effects take a while to occur with chemistries like this.

It does appear that the chemicals in Kratom are safer than some of the opiods they would replace. I think that maybe this should be regulated, with proper prescription someone should be able to buy it from a medical marijuana store.

I believe there is some truth to this article. www.fda.gov...

Plant defense system chemicals are far from harmless sometimes. Just because it is natural means nothing as to it's safety. Heroin is natural, so is coc aine.

Heroin and coc aine are not natural. ANyway, maybe there are already people synthesizing Kratom for something more powerful and dangerous. I bet thats it, yeah, that is it for sure.....

Source.

Kratom can cause many side effects when taken by mouth, including tongue numbness, nausea, vomiting, dry mouth, need to urinate, constipation, aggression, hallucinations, delusions, and thyroid problems. Kratom in large doses may cause trouble breathing, brain swelling, seizure, liver damage, and death.

Kratom can cause dependence when taken regularly. People who use kratom regularly and then stop taking it may experience decreased appetite, diarrhea, muscle pain and spasms, twitches, watery eyes, anxiety, trouble sleeping, anger, hot flashes, and fever.

Special Precautions & Warnings:
Pregnancy and breast-feeding: There is not enough reliable information about the safety of taking kratom if you are pregnant or breast-feeding. Stay on the safe side and avoid use.

Alcoholism: People with alcohol dependence who use kratom appear to have an increased risk of suicide compared to those who use kratom but are not dependent on alcohol.

Mental disorders: In theory, kratom might worsen existing mental disorders. Also, people with mental disorders who use kratom appear to have an increased risk of suicide compared to those who use kratom but do not have a mental disorder.

It may not be as safe as is being advertised. The fact it's addictive is enough it should give people pause. Using one addictive drug to get off another is not exactly a smart thing to do.

I read on the CDC site it's associated with 45 deaths. Most as a result of mixing it with other drugs, but one where just Kratom was used.

Bad for your thyroid, bad for you liver and can cause swelling in the brain.

a reply to: rickymouse

The FDAs data on it is crap. In every case they use as an example of Kratom toxicity there are harder opiates in the persons system at the moment of death. If twenty people die from a fentanyl overdose and 10 of them have coffee in their system do we ban coffee as the culprit?

I understand and respect your opinion, it’s just that I’ve spent a lot of time researching this including reading all the DEA and FDA reports on it. Personal experience and the fact that there have been no overdoses in thousands of years of indigenous use is enough for me to come to my conclusion.

a reply to: Blaine91555

Cool you can read WebMD. You are educated.

I'll base my opinion on ACTUAL PERSONAL EXPERIENCE with the substance.

originally posted by: Blaine91555
Source.

Kratom can cause many side effects when taken by mouth, including tongue numbness, nausea, vomiting, dry mouth, need to urinate, constipation, aggression, hallucinations, delusions, and thyroid problems. Kratom in large doses may cause trouble breathing, brain swelling, seizure, liver damage, and death.

Kratom can cause dependence when taken regularly. People who use kratom regularly and then stop taking it may experience decreased appetite, diarrhea, muscle pain and spasms, twitches, watery eyes, anxiety, trouble sleeping, anger, hot flashes, and fever.

Special Precautions & Warnings:
Pregnancy and breast-feeding: There is not enough reliable information about the safety of taking kratom if you are pregnant or breast-feeding. Stay on the safe side and avoid use.

Alcoholism: People with alcohol dependence who use kratom appear to have an increased risk of suicide compared to those who use kratom but are not dependent on alcohol.

Mental disorders: In theory, kratom might worsen existing mental disorders. Also, people with mental disorders who use kratom appear to have an increased risk of suicide compared to those who use kratom but do not have a mental disorder.

It may not be as safe as is being advertised. The fact it's addictive is enough it should give people pause. Using one addictive drug to get off another is not exactly a smart thing to do.

I read on the CDC site it's associated with 45 deaths. Most as a result of mixing it with other drugs, but one where just Kratom was used.

Bad for your thyroid, bad for you liver and can cause swelling in the brain.

C’mon, man. Does that scary list of ‘side-effects’ (aren’t all they all ‘effects’?) comport with a Schedule 1 listing? Right beside marijuana?? I get the Schedule 1 listing for cannabis/marijuana, but only 1 death directly attributable to Kratom — a specious attribution at that.

Like, for reals?

originally posted by: underwerks
a reply to: rickymouse

The FDAs data on it is crap. In every case they use as an example of Kratom toxicity there are harder opiates in the persons system at the moment of death. If twenty people die from a fentanyl overdose and 10 of them have coffee in their system do we ban coffee as the culprit?

I understand and respect your opinion, it’s just that I’ve spent a lot of time researching this including reading all the DEA and FDA reports on it. Personal experience and the fact that there have been no overdoses in thousands of years of indigenous use is enough for me to come to my conclusion.

I agree it is a good medicine from what I have read. People mix things together in this real world to try to get a buzz and this product can make things bad. I mentioned I think it should be regulated like medical marijuana in my post, a simple doctors prescription would allow people who are in pain to get the product. I do not think this medicine should go completely unregulated, like alcohol it will get abused by many people.

The FDA has a job to make sure something is safe and they really suck at it, believing pharma companies misgathered information. Now I do know that this is a medicinal plant and if used properly it can help lots of people but people abuse these kind of chemistries in this country way more than they did in the past. I would not want my kid using this to get high.

a reply to: Cravens

Shoot the messenger? Go after the player ignoring the ball?

Who is more knowledgable? WebMD or a random person on the Internet making a claim without knowing if they are right?

My opinion on WebMD is neutral, just posting something that is on topic in a thread about Kratom.

a reply to: Blaine91555

It may not be as safe as is being advertised. The fact it's addictive is enough it should give people pause. Using one addictive drug to get off another is not exactly a smart thing to do.

First off, I want to say you're right in almost every fashion, and that should be included in the discussion.

The only thing I do want to point out is that you said it's addictive, the source says it can cause dependency, these are two different things.

Other than that, like anything else, it can and often does have side effects.

I'm sure we could frame caffeine in a way to make a similar argument from that.

What it all boils down to for me is personal liberty though. If someone is aware of the dangers and mitigates them properly, as an adult they should be free to make those decisions.

Is skydiving, guns, cars, junk food, ect... illegal? No.

I think in this instance it presents a threat to big business and the status quo of government.

There has long been a want of governments to control their citizens from altering their minds.

a reply to: Blaine91555

The fact it's addictive is enough it should give people pause. Using one addictive drug to get off another is not exactly a smart thing to do.

The thing about Kratom is that it isn’t addictive in the common way people think about addiction. It’s more along the lines of a caffeine addiction.

It has a ceiling to its effects, which means that the more you take past a certain point the less enjoyable it becomes. It’s more like coffee in that respect. And it actually is in the same family as the coffee plant.

As with any substance it can have a culminative effect when combined with other drugs, but I think we should be talking about levels of harm when it comes to drug abuse.

Is something as natural and as safe as Kratom as bad as drugs like methodone and suboxone, which are dangerous by themselves? Is it really dangerous enough to argue that people should be on those instead?

I don’t think so. And that’s not even getting started on the FDAs cases they try to use as an argument:

One case the FDA listed as a kratom-related death, which has been completely redacted in the document, appears elsewhere in an agency database as a death by homicide due to a gunshot wound to the chest.

Nine of the FDA’s 36 documented deaths were related to a string of fatal overdoses in Sweden in 2010, which involved a controversial kratom-based product that had been adulterated with a dangerous synthetic opioid. An additional eight cases that FDA previously released to HuffPost consisted largely of voluntary reports, including accounts from family members who simply suspected their loved ones had died from kratom use.

Just one of the FDA’s cases appears to involve the presence of kratom alone, though the report includes no information on the death apart from the subject’s age and ethnicity. The report shows the individual tested positive for high levels of mitragynine, but as in the rest of the cases, says nothing about how the substance was determined to have contributed to his death.

The FDA denied HuffPost’s request for additional information on that case.

www.huffingtonpost.com...

a reply to: CriticalStinker

I've made all those same arguments.

I'll counter with how smart is it to take something before it's known if it's safe or not? What are the long term effects? I think a person should know first.

Lets be honest about it here. The real discussion is not about it's medicinal value as it's just as likely there is none as there is any value at all.

Should an addict seek professional medical help, or buy something that may or may not help at convenience store?

a reply to: MarkOfTheV

I respect the T&Cs and don’t have any reason to impugn the site, having said that, you’re spot-on.

I can’t imagine misuse of some drugs contaminating the mind, leading to some wild a$$ conspiracy. Would never happen.

Back to Kratom, I knew something was up when I started seeing the powder at the local convenience store. Wasn’t a month later the owner of said store was moaning about the DEA and an ‘emergency listing’ in a letter he received.

There is absolutely no need for Kratom to be emergency listed outside of protecting ill-gotten gains. Sounds like some other good/commodity was getting it coming and going from Kratom’s presence on the open market, and call me crazy (or drugged), but I would hazard a guess it’s the Opioids market that was getting kicked in the teeth by Kratom.

Buy some cuttings and a grow light and grow your own.

a reply to: underwerks

Thanks, that's helpful info.

Are there any double blind studies showing how effective it is as an aid to quitting opioids?

You see part of my problem is that when addicts seek help on the streets, it just does not end well. Let's be honest here, the real desire is to use it for other reasons.

If it turns out to be safe after study, its fine with me. Until then, it's a risk. I see nothing about long term use.

Marijuana for instance is known to be safe and I have no problem with it and in fact voted in favor of it. This though, is something quite different. Little is known about it's long term effects or even its short term effects.

a reply to: Blaine91555

I'll be honest and say that you've made very valid points.

Personally I'm arguing liberty more than medically. Realistically they aren't going to put near the studies or funding to make it possible for it to be researched in the manner that it should. More so, the structure as it stands doesn't want that to happen.

We have got caught with our pants down with things that seem more innocent before though, artificial sweeteners, asbestos... on and on.

My point is they put so much focus into making certain things illegal while other things are aloud to hit the market with us as the guinea pigs.

Further more, what will making it illegal do? How has that worked with other drugs? More tax dollars to attack a very small issue in the scope of things, and more people off to prison.

originally posted by: Blaine91555
a reply to: Cravens

Shoot the messenger? Go after the player ignoring the ball?

Who is more knowledgable? WebMD or a random person on the Internet making a claim without knowing if they are right?

My opinion on WebMD is neutral, just posting something that is on topic in a thread about Kratom.

By definition you are a random person on the internet, a messenger? Nah, I’d say a parrot, particularly that part about the deaths. As noted above, the ONE death was specious and hardly indicative of a public health crisis on the order of a Schedule 1 listing (as a messenger myself, I’d like to encourage you to read the criterion that dictates listing under the CSA...might even suggest you recognize that the FDA is pulling the strings by designating it as a drug without any due diligence — this is absolutely the DEA listing Kratom vis-a-vie FDA bureaucracy [bureaucracy is the antithesis of limited government] and has zero to do with public health optimization).

But, yeah, WebMD can be useful if you have hot cock or a spider bite or torn muscle — you got me there.

a reply to: CriticalStinker

I've not really commented on the legality of it. I'm fairly neutral on that and to be honest I don't really care what others take or don't take. I'm a bit of a Libertarian on that. I'm simply arguing that not enough is known about this to say for sure it is safe.

a reply to: Cravens

Why yes I am a random person on the Internet. You should never take advice from me one way or the other.

Discussing it without discussing the possible negative effects of it though is just promoting it, not discussing it.

So funny you mention fentanyl too. I just did some research on it and guess how large the profit margin is? This will forever explain the drug war and the reason for it to exist.

Street price of heroin is about $6,000 pr kilogram. When cut and sold and whatever they do, you can make UP TO $80,000 per kilo.

Fentanyl when sold by the pharmaceuticals nets $16,000,000 per kilogram.

$80k to $16m.

200 times more.