The beginning of the end? In Utah?
Utah of all places, is the first state of which I am aware that has formally considered banning kratom. See: http://bit.ly/fNbLBY and http://bit.ly/fThGMW.
The story is incredibly poorly written and hard to follow but from what I can gather, Utah state lawmakers drafted a bill to ban kratom without consulting the drug advisory committee that they themselves formed to advise on drug issues. That committee then met with the lawmakers and stated their opposition to the bill. It's unclear whether they opposed it for substantive reasons or just because they essentially weren't consulted. It's also unclear what the current status of the bill is. If anyone can find any more information, I'd love to hear it.
In the meantime maybe we can all pitch in to send Mr. Weist to J-School.
State governments working with local law enforcement to identify and ban "new" drugs at the state level in a rapidly increasing trend and one that fortells the end of kratom in the US in the near future. Why? Well the feds tend to move quite slowly and delibrately unless people die and it makes the news, which will never happen with kratom. On the other hand, as you can gather from the SLC Tribune "article," the state lawmakers are comparatively a bunch of yahoos who can do anything at any time (has anyone ever died from kratom? or even been physically harmed by it?). The problem is that it only takes one - Utah bans it, it makes the news, then Wyoming doesn't want to look soft on drugs, so it bans it, and pretty soon you have a snowball effect and states essentially get steamrolled into bans based on a couple of lousy mormons.
We are seeing it happen big-time with MDPV (type "bath salts" in to Google News) and I fear this "states first" approach is going to be the new paradigm that ends up taking out everything in its path, including kratom. I could be wrong, the states may back off and take a level-headed approach (like the advisory committee has done) when it comes to less harmul substances like kratom (as far as I'm concerned, MDPV should be banned) but I kinda doubt it.
-minger
[ADDENDUM]
Ack! Just catching up with the news and see now that military members at Goodfellow Air Force Base in Texas are prohibited from using Kratom: http://bit.ly/gGLilb The article is mainly about salvia and spice; seems like kratom just sort of got dragged along without justification...
Utah of all places, is the first state of which I am aware that has formally considered banning kratom. See: http://bit.ly/fNbLBY and http://bit.ly/fThGMW.
The story is incredibly poorly written and hard to follow but from what I can gather, Utah state lawmakers drafted a bill to ban kratom without consulting the drug advisory committee that they themselves formed to advise on drug issues. That committee then met with the lawmakers and stated their opposition to the bill. It's unclear whether they opposed it for substantive reasons or just because they essentially weren't consulted. It's also unclear what the current status of the bill is. If anyone can find any more information, I'd love to hear it.
In the meantime maybe we can all pitch in to send Mr. Weist to J-School.
State governments working with local law enforcement to identify and ban "new" drugs at the state level in a rapidly increasing trend and one that fortells the end of kratom in the US in the near future. Why? Well the feds tend to move quite slowly and delibrately unless people die and it makes the news, which will never happen with kratom. On the other hand, as you can gather from the SLC Tribune "article," the state lawmakers are comparatively a bunch of yahoos who can do anything at any time (has anyone ever died from kratom? or even been physically harmed by it?). The problem is that it only takes one - Utah bans it, it makes the news, then Wyoming doesn't want to look soft on drugs, so it bans it, and pretty soon you have a snowball effect and states essentially get steamrolled into bans based on a couple of lousy mormons.
We are seeing it happen big-time with MDPV (type "bath salts" in to Google News) and I fear this "states first" approach is going to be the new paradigm that ends up taking out everything in its path, including kratom. I could be wrong, the states may back off and take a level-headed approach (like the advisory committee has done) when it comes to less harmul substances like kratom (as far as I'm concerned, MDPV should be banned) but I kinda doubt it.
-minger
[ADDENDUM]
Ack! Just catching up with the news and see now that military members at Goodfellow Air Force Base in Texas are prohibited from using Kratom: http://bit.ly/gGLilb The article is mainly about salvia and spice; seems like kratom just sort of got dragged along without justification...
Last edited: