You would have to be insane to think kratom gaining popularity wouldn't be a huge contributor for it getting banned. High doses of kratom aren't even dangerous, so I would argue the risk of greater widespread use is even more influential than a few unpleasant experiences from high doses. With more users comes more dependency, which comes with more hospitalizations, which come with more negative attention, which comes with that oh so lovely media sensationalism users of once legal drugs have come to love.
Obviously the DEA has known about kratom for a while, it just hasn't been a big enough problem for them to bother regulating it. With the rate that popularity is increasing you would have to be foolish to think that this wouldn't have a huge impact on future regulation (or more likely, full on banishment). I don't want to discourage people from asking questions, I just wished people would run a search before creating new threads. Or that people were more conscientious as to who they told about it.
At the end of the day most kratom users heard about it by consistently seeing it mentioned on message boards, so unfortunately talking about it does indirectly contribute to government intervention as it increases exposure, leading to the problems above. Lessening the amount of repeat threads would hopefully cut down at least some of that exposure. As someone who's never heard of kratom it must be hard not to see what the fuss is about when you see new threads about this somewhat obscure drug on the front pages of OD and BDD at what seems like all times.
