No Cannabis Re-Scheduling, And Now Kratom Too

(SALEM, Ore.) - As you all will know, the United States Drug Enforcement Agency failed to re-schedule Cannabis at the Federal Level last month.

For many years, Cannabis has been Schedule 1, alongside cocaine and heroin. Despite being used as medicine all over the United States, and the world over, Cannabis is deemed at the federal level to have no medicinal value.

Not only does this make the plant difficult to access for many of the people who depend upon it as medicine, especially in states where it is not publicly sold, it also makes Cannabis very difficult to research.

New innovations which could be based on the bouquet of cannabinoids, new ways of using the plant in practice and culture, all these are put on hold as the US continues to maintain its draconian policy.

You may not be familiar with Kratom. It is much less popular and culturally known than Cannabis, but it shares much of Cannbis’s potential for valuable medical applications, despite the DEA having determined that it has no research value or spot in the economy.

This is frustrating for anyone who understands the value of remarkable psychoactive chemicals native to plants. It’s also disturbing for anyone who currently depends upon Kratom for any of its powerful effects.

Kratom, heretofore bought and sold more or less legally in the United States, is a powerful painkiller, with some interesting psychoactive effects besides.

Kratom is a powderized leaf from South-Central Asia. It has been used for many generations in places like Indonesia, where the leaves are used to make a tea, or prepared various other ways.

As a natural pain-killer, Kratom has many of the same psychoactive properties of drugs like prescription opiates. But in its unrefined form, the drug poses far less risk to the user than, say, a month’s supply of Oxycontin. Though dependency can emerge among habitual users, Kratom is much more difficult to become dependent upon.

For one, it tastes terrible. The only way to ingest the unrefined product (still the only way to buy the drug in the United States, except for poor “concentrates” and other undeveloped derivatives) is in powdered form, by mouth.

Most people have to consume several grams of the stuff per session. The hydrophobic plant matter is very difficult to mix into water, and then extremely unpalatable if swallowed.

Bitter to a degree most people have not tasted, it’s just very hard to choke down. Taken within capsules, the user will have to swallow more than a dozen pills at a time, “burping” up the taste in the minutes following consumption.

But the pain relieving effects are real. Similar to prescription pain killers in some ways, the effects last for a few hours, then recede.

Mental clarity, imaginative function change, and other subjective psychological effects are often reported, prompting some users to say that Kratom is like a mix of Cannabis and Prescription pain killers, just more reserved than both.

If that sounds good to you, it’s because it is. Kratom has a host of potential benefits, and is currently used by many opiate dependent persons to ween themselves off the more harmful drugs.

And yet, kratom is reserved to Schedule 1, where it may now go without research and practical application alongside Cannabis.

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Anonymous September 11, 2016 6:32 pm (Pacific time)

since we are all on the same page...check this article out...it only makes our comments more believable..hot off my press :-)

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-11/maker-drug-fueling-heroin-overdose-epidemic-lobbying-keep-weed-illegal

Thomas Dixon September 6, 2016 9:27 am (Pacific time)

Kratom should be distributed at mental health clinics across the globe as it has enormous potential to alleviate depression and anxiety. It sould be distributed at all drug and alcohol treatment centers for its amazing ability to take away those cravings. It does not get you high, it does not cloud your thinking and it does not cause a hangover. And our tyrannical government is now making felons out of those that use it.

Anonymous September 6, 2016 5:34 am (Pacific time)

I've used Kratom safely, responsibly and successfully for a couple of years to treat my depression, anxiety and physical pain from type II bipolar disorder and back pain. I continue to use Kratom while taking up healthy practices of prayer, mindfulness, exercising self control and personal ethics. All of these things used together help me to maintain a calm mind and satisfied sense of being. Of course due to the near impossibility of doing ANYTHING when depressed, in pain and anxiety ridden, it was difficult finding a way to incorporate prayer and mindfulness. But, as the saying goes, practice makes perfect. After a long while of pharmaceutical medications, attending counseling and therapy services, my state of mind became stagnant and dissonant. Once I began using Kratom, I was able to Identify the crippling traits of my mental illness and I began to utilize the extra dimension Kratom provided and use that as a new scope from which to live. The scope of relief! I chose my actions according to a deeper and more genuine understanding of myself. Without the "fog brain" pharmaceuticals gave me, I was able to live a normal life and now work 3 jobs on top of teaching yoga. I found Kratom three years ago after I had began searching for natural and safe ways to address my physical pain. This, as I understand is a side effect of bipolar disorder and depression. My medication schedule was so oppressive. So many side effects and the amount of time took to get the therapeutic dosages, it was draining and most of the time unsuccessful. I finally gave up all prescription medication and spiraled into a 6 year period of alcohol and drug abuse. When I first found Kratom, I immediately noticed minimizing effects of cognitive dissonance, the absence of anxiety attacks and the impact of depressive obsession. With Kratom, I began to slowly, but surely, turn around to more frequent and longer sustained times of clarity, calmness, and satisfactory pain relief regardless of any difficult condition. The presence of clarity and pain relief that accompanies Kratom use, allows this extra mental space, and physical ability to go to work and function as a happy, healthy individual. Kratom reinforces the element of self-control, or "doing what I think is right" (personal morals), and contributes to work ethic which builds resolve and a more solid sense of ability. I am a daughter and a soon to be wife. My family depends on my being well to take care of them, to provide. Certainly I can do it without Kratom. Certainly I can live my life without successful treatment of my illnesses. People do it all the time, every day- even now. But, to be robbed of a benign plant with so many safe properties (that has all but cured my mental illness and made my physical pain completely manageable) is inhumane and torturous! I will live and manage, but it will be in pain and with much suffering. I am being sent back to medications that don't work, or work for short periods. And, soon to follow that, another guessing game at dosage and timing and WHICH medication. With their side effects and their abuse potential and their monthly follow-ups and their co-payments. I have to go back to all that? This is equivalent to taking insulin away form a diabetic or refusing a by-pass surgery to a heart patient. Is it not? Kratom is absolutely, without a doubt, the best natural intervention I have stumbled across. I am extremely grateful to have had it. Kratom, with its alkaloids, needs to have some conclusive studies done, SOON, to verify that this IS a promising plant and has endless potential. Kratom, with its alkaloids, is scaring the FDA. Allowing the DEA to schedule Kratom as a Schedule 1 substance is extreme and unnecessary. Scheduling Kratom this way prevents science to study it's effects in a medical setting. This is overreach is terrible and harmful to most of society. It is undemocratic. It is a thievery of basic human rights. Please step in and stop this perversion of what this country was founded and built. Freedom and the pursuit of happiness. There is currently a petition to the Whitehouse that has yielded over 60K signatures in 7 days. We the people deserve to be heard, but the DEA claims there is no reason for public comment. Please help us get the word out about this amazing plant, it helped me with my mental illness but countless people use this tea for chronic pain, lupus, endometriosis, PTSD and a myriad of other health concerns. Thank you for your time and energy Brittany

John September 6, 2016 12:29 am (Pacific time)

It's high time to have an independent enquiry into the DEA and the large scale atrocities they are commiting by depriving innocent sick people of natural herbs that heal them and which is provided to them naturally by Mother Nature, this is unacceptable and should not be tolerated any longer, they need to be shut down and replaced with an enforcement agency who have people's best interest at heart. Shut down the DEA they are the ones pedalling in people's death and misery

JR September 5, 2016 4:55 pm (Pacific time)

It's too bad. They obviously know the plant has a lot of benefits, but it doesn't help them with their bottom line so they are going to do whatever they can to stop it. So depressing to read something like this. I know a handful (4 to be exact) of people who used kratom to ween themselves off of life ruining opiates and each of those people now live a completely substance-free happy life. I'm probably wasting my time though because I don't think the DEA, FDA or whoever is involved really cares at all about public safety. They knowingly prescribe pills that kill thousands of people. It's legit murder by people who are completely free of any consequence. They know banning kratom is going to push people back into taking their highly dangerous drugs that profit them. It's scary how important money is. The deaths of thousands of people mean absolutely nothing as long as it's lining pockets with money. Disgusting.

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No Cannabis Re-Scheduling, And Now Kratom Too

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