Drug overdoses killed roughly 64,000 people in the United States last year, according to the government’s own account of nationwide drug deaths to cover all of 2016. The vast majority of those deaths are from opioid-based substances such as fentanyl, heroin, and prescription opioids. Now, a natural plant that is helping people kick their addictions to these dangerous opioids — kratom — is under attack by the FDA as it is threatening big pharma’s grip on the pain and addiction market.
On Tuesday, Scott Gottlieb, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, issued a public health advisory on kratom, outlining concerns about its “deadly risks.”
As HuffPo notes, Gottlieb’s statement outlined concerns about the herb’s potential for abuse and addiction. He claimed there was “clear data” on these harms, pointing to reports of 36 deaths associated with kratom-containing products and a tenfold increase in calls involving kratom to U.S. poison control centers from 2010 to 2015.
Although kratom users have touted the herb as a safe and effective treatment for conditions like chronic pain, anxiety and depression, as well as a replacement drug for opioid addiction, Gottlieb said there is “no reliable evidence to support” those applications, the HuffPo report continues. In particular, he called the use of kratom as an opioid substitute “extremely concerning” and suggested that it could actually “expand the opioid epidemic.”
“pointing to reports of 36 deaths associated with kratom-containing products”
Did they point out that in every one of these cases the death was due to other drugs in the victim’s system?
To continue
“Pharmacologist (David) Kroll says it is going overboard to classify this plant as a dangerous drug. “Kratom being lumped in with other opioids is both unfair and unscientific,” he says. “It glosses over the subtleties of how the main chemical in kratom actually works.”
The main chemical is mitragynine. It binds to some of the same receptors as opioids, providing some pain relief and feelings of euphoria, but, Kroll says, not the same high. And the chemical doesn’t cause the same, sometimes deadly, side effects as opioids, such as respiratory depression.
“It turns out mitragynine has a very low risk of respiratory depression,” Kroll says. “It also appears that it’s very difficult to at least get animals, get mice addicted to ‘mitra’ — either with the herb or with the pure chemical.”
So what about the people who died? Fourteen of the 15 people also had other drugs or illegal substances in their systems. Advocates for keeping kratom legal also point out that opioid abuse kills tens of thousands of people every year.
So yeah, long story short, this is not to protect Americans, this is to protect our Opioid industry which basically LIVES off the US’s consumption. And has been killing us by the 10′s of thousands.
DEEP WORLD SEA 