KRATOM IN KENTUCKY: THE BATTLE RANGES ON
A kratom ban provision was added in a revenue bill in the Kentucky Senate and is coming back to the House. Anything that can be done to block that would be critical for kratom consumers in Kentucky.
This was slipped into a must-pass revenue bill without any notice, on the last day of the Legislature.
The proposed amendment by Senator McDaniel is completely out-of-sync with the federal policy on kratom where HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and FDA Commissioner Makary had identified the public threat from chemically manipulated 7-OH products that have been recommended for classification as a Schedule I substance. 7-OH IS NOT kratom but this bill unfortunately mushes them into one category.
Commissioner Makary specifically emphasized that the focus of the FDA is on the chemically manipulated synthetic opioid (7-OH) and is not focused on natural leaf kratom products.
Banning kratom in Kentucky will have a significant impact on sales tax revenue, increase costs of incarceration given kratom will be criminalized, and will force current kratom consumers who rely on it as an alternative to opioids or illicit drugs that will increase overdoses and costs for substance abuse treatments. Former HHS Assistant Secretary of Health, Dr. Brett Giroir, characterized the attempt by the FDA to ban kratom as being based on “embarrassingly poor evidence and data.” All of that happened in 2018.
Today, the FDA has conducted a human Dose Finding Study that showed natural kratom leaf products were “well tolerated at all dose levels” documenting the safety of natural kratom leaf products.
A ban would be step backwards.
