The Kratom Consumer Protection Act happened overnight?
It sure feels like just the other day kratom, also know as mitragyna speciosa, was facing a massive uphill battle with the DEA, the FDA and several other agencies pursuing kratom be removed from public availability. If you haven’t followed the fight is started at the state level in 2013ish, then moved in September 2016 to a national fight that had thousands public protesting and over a hundred thousand signing a petition to the Obama administration to keep it legal and accessible. The public fight to Keep Kratom Legal in 2016 and 2017 was nothing short of amazing and eventually the DEA and FDA stepped back to reassess what the public and even some members of Congress demanded. If you aren’t familiar with all this just check out A Leaf Of Faith on Netflix or for rent on Amazon and your favorite streaming services to get a better understanding of that time. As time went by and a new President came in to office, so to did new heads of the DEA and the FDA and we eventually were introduced to Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the new director of the FDA and the true nemesis to millions of wonderful people that just want to be allowed access to a plant that provides them some quality of life and better wellbeing. So again began the gnashing of teeth by many and yet more stress was added to the lives of so many.
For quite some time there have been both pubic advocates from the consumer base and industry working to find better standards as well as representing why kratom needed to stay legal and every large group needs their champions, for Kratom that has been two organizations over the years, the first was Botanical Education Alliance and more recently the larger American Kratom Association, representing the industry and consumers in the fight to keep kratom legal. Now if you read media articles about kratom you hear the false story that Kratom is unregulated, that actually isn’t true, there are regulations for everything imported and sold directly to consumers like kratom just most aren’t completely familiar with them. Depending on how the product is being both represented by the industry and the consumer base establishes what regulations apply. In the case of kratom at times you find it being sold as a medicine/cure/treatment(very illegal) but that would require the products be submitted via the drug approval process taking hundreds of millions, possibly billions and a decade or so of research and studies. That obviously isn’t being done and so that’s largely when many have seen the FDA step in and address the companies selling those products. The other regulation that is more commonly accepted is the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, a law established for the supplement industry, kratom included, to address better standards with proper documentation, labeling, testing for contamination as well as adulterants and so many other issues. This is where the problem comes in, because kratom wasn’t regularly available on the market prior to 1994 here in the US there is a far more strict set of regulation that generally makes plants like Kratom nearly impossible to meet all the standards in place. Sometimes you will hear kratom referred to as a grey market botanical because although there are standards established by DSHEA the industry has largely for years ignored most/all of them. When the fight became federal in 2016 this was one of the areas that had to eventually be addressed, how to legally sell kratom to make sure the consumer will know what they have purchased meets or exceeds those standards established in the laws.
One of the stages to this, to get where we are now, was for the organizations along with other public and private advocates, to push the industry toward regulating itself and being better than they had been in the past. Both the AKA, via their current Good Manufacturing Procedures program that was established last year as well as the BEA who have been pushing for this same type of legitimacy via standards creating the framework for what was to come. For several years many, including myself, have openly speculated about changes in the laws but its become very obvious that folks like Mac Haddow, Dave Herman(head of the AKA), Angela Watson at BEA and others wouldn't settle for speculating and they developed what is now known as the Kratom Consumer Protection Act then stepped up and started to lobby state lawmakers around the US to come on board to not only keep kratom legal but to also make sure the consumers were actually being addressed through better safety measures. What felt like overnight but was months, maybe years behind the scenes on March 26 of 2019 Utah became the first state to fully recognize kratom making it legal for the residents and those visiting to continue to have access.
Not long after Utah came Georgia who have now passed their own version of the KCPA which is currently waiting to be signed in to law by the governor. In recent weeks there is also another half dozen or so states that have picked up the KCPA to hold hearings and it wont be long with the fight that the advocacy groups have put up along with a lot of passionate industry folks and consumers fighting to make it fully legal also. I can’t even begin to say how amazing this is and thanks is truly owed to both the AKA and their staff, the BEA and many other public as well as private advocates who have changed things practically overnight for so many people that just want to have proper access with better oversight. So even though the organizations and supporters are working very hard at keeping kratom legal in several states that have actually looked to banning the plant, at the same time those organizations and advocates have changed the playing field to enact future protection for the access of all consumers.
What can I say except I sure hope my state is next.
Bravo American Kratom Association.
Bravo Botanical Education Alliance.
Bravo all you public voices for a plant that cant speak for itself.
Its truly an amazing time to watch the wheels turn to Keep Kratom Legal in 2019.
If you want to know what you can do you can start supporting the American Kratom Association on social media and by donation at http://www.americankratom.org/ and the Botanical Education Alliance at https://www.botanical-education.org/. Share the film A Leaf of Faith with friends and family, raising awareness about this wonderful plant only helps to make sure it stays legal federally and more states follow Utah and Georgia in passing the Kratom Consumer Protection Act. The one greatest thing you can do though is speak up, tell your story to others, get involved in the public discussion about Kratom across social media and make sure your lawmakers at the state and national level truly know you want to see them Keep Kratom Legal.
Just remember, This Isnt Over.