this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2024
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United States | News & Politics
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Because kratom is an easy target. Few people have heard of it so it's easy to force their initial reaction. It threatens both the pain drug and marijuana lobbies.
Yeah definitely. I have a friend who has a severe abdominal pain issue that no one has been able to figure out for almost a decade now, severe enough and without any sort of warning that he is on disability and cannot work. Sometimes so bad he has to be hospitalized. Most doctors he's seen have essentially just been wanting to throw opiates at it, just treating the symptoms with highly addictive drugs.
Most of the time however, kratom has been able to treat the daily symptoms. When that can't, marijuana has been able to. He rarely has an issue requiring a hospital visit now despite still no idea what the root cause is.
I do think there needs to be some sort of regulation on things like additives along with the kratom. I feel like a lot of those deaths are more likely a situation similar to fentanyl being secretly added to street drugs to boost the effect, and that not being disclosed to the user or potentially even known by the dealer which causes people to overdose using a dose that otherwise would have been "safe".
We don't want to force more things down the same path as truly medically relevant drugs like marijuana thanks to political bullshit like the failed War on Drugs.