DEA Announces Intent to Schedule Kratom

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DEA Announces Intent to Schedule Kratom

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I'm not sure if this is the right place to put this, so if this posting isn't in the right place, could someone please move it?

Thanks

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---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

August 30, 2016
Contact: DEA Public Affairs
(202) 307-7977

DEA Announces Intent to Schedule Kratom

SE Asian drug is imminent hazard to public safety

AUG 30 (WASHINGTON) - The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) today announced its intention to place the active materials in the kratom plant into Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act in order to avoid an imminent hazard to public safety. Mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine are found in kratom, which is a tropical tree indigenous to Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar, and other areas of Southeast Asia. The announcement was made in the U.S. Federal Register and can be found by following this link.

Kratom is abused for its ability to produce opioid-like effects and is often marketed as a legal alternative to controlled substances. Law enforcement nationwide has seized more kratom in the first half of 2016 than any previous year and easily accounts for millions of dosages intended for the recreational market, according to DEA findings. In addition, kratom has a high potential for abuse, has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and has a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision. These three factors constitute a Schedule I controlled substance according to the Controlled Substances Act passed by Congress in 1970.

Kratom has been seized by law enforcement in various forms, including powder, plant, capsules, tablets, liquids, gum/resin, and drug patch. Because the identity, purity levels, and quantity of these substances are uncertain and inconsistent, they pose significant adverse health risks to users.

From February 2014 to July 2016, over 55,000 kilograms of kratom material were encountered by law enforcement at various ports of entry within the United States. Additionally, another 57,000+ kilograms of kratom material offered for import into the United States between 2014 and 2016 are awaiting an FDA admissibility decision. Together, this material is enough to produce over 12 million doses of kratom. The FDA has also warned the public not to use any products labeled as containing kratom due to concerns about toxicity and potential health impacts. In addition, FDA has issued and updated two import alerts related to kratom products. Kratom has been on DEA’s list of drugs and chemicals of concern for several years.

The American Association of Poison Control Centers identified two exposures to kratom from 2000 and 2005. Between 2010 and 2015, U.S. poison centers received 660 calls related to kratom exposure. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) found that kratom abuse leads to agitation, irritability, tachycardia, nausea, drowsiness, and hypertension. Health risks found in kratom abusers include hepatotoxicity, psychosis, seizure, weight loss, insomnia, tachycardia, vomiting, poor concentration, hallucinations, and death. DEA is aware of 15 kratom-related deaths between 2014 and 2016.

Source: https://www.dea.gov/divisions/hq/2016/hq083016.shtml" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; (clearnet)

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DEA Announces Intent to Schedule Kratom

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Health
DEA will ban chemicals contained in kratom, a popular herbal supplement
Joe Raedle/Getty Images

By Eric Boodman @ericboodman

August 30, 2016

https://www.statnews.com/2016/08/30/kra ... chedule-1/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The Drug Enforcement Administration on Tuesday announced its intention to temporarily ban the chemicals contained in kratom, a popular herbal supplement that has been widely used as a way to self-treat chronic pain, post-traumatic stress disorder, and a number of other conditions.

Kratom, a plant from Southeast Asia that activates some of the same receptors as opioids, can be easily purchased online and in smoke shops. Although consumers have embraced the supplement as a painkiller and in some cases as a replacement for opioids, physicians worry about users who turn to kratom to try to wean themselves off opioids without seeking professional help. They also worry that it may be adulterated, given how little the substance is regulated.

The Food and Drug Administration has been trying to crack down on the substance, banning its import and ordering seizures of illegally packaged kratom product. But because the substance is officially considered an herbal supplement, the FDA has had little power to regulate its contents. A handful of states have banned it as well.

Now, however, the DEA has announced plans to temporarily classify two of kratom’s psychoactive chemicals as Schedule 1 — the same category in which heroin, LSD, marijuana, and ecstasy are listed. The two chemicals are called mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine. By banning the active chemicals, the DEA is making sure that both the plant and any synthetic versions of it are included in the new regulation.

The DEA can temporarily move substances to Schedule 1 for up to two years when it believes they present a public health crisis. A spokeswoman for the agency, Barbara Carreno, said that during that time the Department of Health and Human Services needs to study the substance in question.

If their studies find that it is indeed as much of a public health threat as the DEA suspected, then it will remain banned. If not, the substance will revert to being legal.

“It’s a very tragic day,” said Susan Ash, the founder and director of the American Kratom Association, an advocacy group that works to keep the substance legal.

The issue is more than just work-related for Ash, who used kratom to wean herself off opiates to treat the chronic pain she attributes to Lyme disease. She still takes kratom every day to help control her pain.

“This just ripped my quality of life right out from under me,” she said. “This is the plant that returned me to being a productive member of society, and I truly fear for my future, and I fear for all of the people who found kratom to be a solution for them to get off things like heroin. I foresee a large jump in the already epidemic proportions of opiate deaths in this country.”

Ash and other kratom advocates insist that the substance is no more addictive than coffee, and that as long as it is unadulterated, it is safe for adults to consume. They claim that it is impossible to overdose because consuming too much kratom will make you throw up.

Emergency room doctors and toxicologists, on the other hand, have seen kratom interact negatively with other drugs. In the most extreme cases, seizures have been reported.

“There needs to be some oversight as to what kind of products are being sold in the interest of consumer safety,” Oliver Grundmann, a pharmacologist at the University of Florida, told STAT in late July, a month before the DEA’s announcement.

He added, though, that he is “not necessarily saying that everything related to the plant should be put in Schedule 1. We have seen the damage that that can do to a drug with promising pharmacological properties… For me it’s a death sentence. Once you put a plant and its ingredients into DEA Schedule 1, it’s very hard to do research on it, and it will become very hard to move forward with any positive developments because there is such a stigma associated.”

It was not immediately clear when the temporary ban would go into effect. The notice released Tuesday said the ban would take effect no sooner than the end of September, to give those who manufacture, distribute, or take kratom enough time to get rid of whatever they have.

Eric Boodman can be reached at eric.boodman@statnews.com
Follow Eric on Twitter @ericboodman

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DEA Announces Intent to Schedule Kratom

Post by smokebreaks »

In cities all across the United States, motherfuckers are dying from juiced up smack at alarming rates and U-47700 is still readily available from China.

It's all about big pharma making their money isn't it?

Seems I saw a thing the other day, more people are dying from the chemotherapy than they are the cancer itself.

I really shake my head, and feel terrible for the world we live in.

Moronic bastards at the helm, steering the ship straight into the abyss.

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DEA Announces Intent to Schedule Kratom

Post by Jesús Malverde »

The obvious answer is even if you think the isolated chemical constituents of particular plants should be controlled, there is never any reason to control raw plant material. There simply is no plant so dangerous it should be banned, but raw plants can't be patented or monetized as IP, so they are a threat to Big Pharma. It's all about protecting the interests of dirtbag billionaires.
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DEA Announces Intent to Schedule Kratom

Post by bentech »

Maker of Deadly Fentanyl Kicks in Half a Million Dollars to Defeat Pot Legalization in Arizona

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DEA Announces Intent to Schedule Kratom

Post by bentech »

this guy might have just saved two lives while endangering 3 plus public

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Post by Jesús Malverde »

Shame porn. It allows us to point and feel superior while doing nothing for the victims. Meanwhile, the maker of fentanyl is bankrolling the campaign against legal cannabis in Arizona and the opium crops in Afghanistan have expanded dramatically under the corrupt US-friendly colonial government. The US opioid epidemic is, besides, largely the result of the neoliberal economic policies that are sacred to both the Democratic and Republican Parties that run the US and the effects of those policies on a disappearing middle class abandoned by the government.
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DEA Announces Intent to Schedule Kratom

Post by Freakalicious »

More people are dying from chemo than cancer? So the people who didn't take chemo would have lived long lives without? Obviously chemo is not the cure that we need for cancer but the study surely didn't say that no chemo or better than none or that there was a better choice.

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Post by smokebreaks »

Researchers from Public Health England and Cancer Research UK performed a groundbreaking study examining for the first time the numbers of cancer patients who died within 30 days of beginning chemotherapy — indicating the treatment, not the cancer, was the cause of death.

Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.com/chemot ... Tt520lx.99" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Or read the study here:

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanon ... S1470-2045(16" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;)30383-7/abstract
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DEA Announces Intent to Schedule Kratom

Post by Freakalicious »

So basically they are saying that some patients shouldn't have been given chemo because they were already in a state that was too weak to survive it. Basically nothing that we already didn't know. For the majority of patients survival rates are better with chemo than without.

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