“It really comes down to your evaluation of a harm reduction tool. Other than that, it’s a freedom issue.”
By Ben Adlin, Filter
Dozens of legislatures across the United States are currently weighing how to regulate or ban kratom, a plant with mild opioid-like properties that’s indigenous to Southeast Asia. It’s used by people around the world who attest to its abilities to elevate mood, boost energy, relieve pain and—perhaps most crucially in an era of mass overdose deaths—treat symptoms of opioid withdrawal and sometimes replace opioids.
The flurry of state-level scrutiny follows efforts in recent years by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to ban the drug, which remains unregulated at the federal level.
A majority of states either have no current regulations or very limited rules, such as an age limit. Six states, however—Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Tennessee, Vermont and Wisconsin—already have kratom bans, as do a handful of local jurisdictions.
Some states have now proposed further bans on kratom products. Mississippi is one, although lawmakers there have seen multiple such bills fail in recent years. Louisiana lawmakers have also prefiled prohibition legislation.
For Mac Haddow, a lobbyist and senior fellow on public policy at the
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