- Kratom, sometimes referred to as “gas station heroin,” is an herb with opioid- and stimulant-like effects.
- It can be fatal in very high doses but is not subject to much federal regulation.
- So states and cities have been banning kratom sales or enacting rules and restrictions.
Maybe not a lot of ODs, but it is addictive and bad for your health long-term.
And yes, I would say the same about cigarettes. Make doctors prescribe them and taper people down slowly in conjunction with pharmaceutical help to get them to quit.
Is it addictive? Like, physically addictive or “that was nice, I’d like to do it again” addictive? I’ve known people who used it daily for months and quit with no reported problems, side effects, withdrawals, etc. Of course, my sample size is 3 so this is anecdotal.
As I’m sure you know, unbiased information about these things is hard to come by, but for what it’s worth, here are some sources which do claim it has serious dependency issues.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32682371/
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/prescription-drug-abuse/in-depth/kratom-opioid-withdrawal/art-20402170
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0376871624002503
It can be very physically addictive.
I don’t think that, given the current evidence we have, that we can reasonably put them even close to cigarettes in terms of long-term health consequences. “Addictive”, by itself, doesn’t seem like a strong reason to ban or even put particularly significant regulations in place.
Given the scope and scale of opiate deaths in the US, I don’t think that it’s even realistic to say that it’s even close to as bad as any opiate or opioid. Overall, I’d say that we’re wasting valuable resources in any attempts to regulate it, things that could be better spent one opiate/opioid addiction mitigation. It would be nice if we didn’t have limited resources, but we do, and we shouldn’t be putting attention on minor-league stuff when we have much, much bigger problems.